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Iconic times A-listers have rocked the Union Jack from Geri Halliwell, to Kate Moss and Taylor Swift - after school came under fire for banning flag-themed outfit

Iconic times A-listers have rocked the Union Jack from Geri Halliwell, to Kate Moss and Taylor Swift - after school came under fire for banning flag-themed outfit

Daily Mail​5 days ago
A school caused quite the debate this week when a 'straight A' student was put into isolation for wearing wearing a Union Jack dress for her school's culture day.
Courtney Wright, 12, wore a Spice Girls-esque dress to celebrate being British and wrote a speech about history as part of the celebrations at Bilton School in Rugby, Warwickshire.
However, the Year 7 pupil was told the dress was 'unacceptable' and was made to sit in reception until her 'gobsmacked' father Stuart Field, 47, collected her.
Despite the stir, Union Jacks certainly quite the fashion statement in popular culture, with a whole host of celebrities rocking the flag over the years.
Some A-listers have gone down in the history books for rocking Union Jack outfits, with Geri Halliwell for one becoming synonymous with her flag-themed mini dress.
And she is certainly not the only one, with American celebrities even jumping on the trend to show off their love for British culture.
Geri Halliwell
Arguably the most famous Union Jack look, Geri, 52, stepped out at the 1997 BRIT Awards in a mini dress featuring the flag.
Joined by her Spice Girls bandmates Victoria Beckham, Mel B, Mel C and Emma Bunton, Geri certainly attracted attention in the daring look.
Geri revealed the iconic look was actually created by her very own hand as she stitched a tea towel on the front of a 50s style Gucci black mini dress.
It has gone down in pop culture history and the look has inspired many party costumes in the years since, with everyone wanting to channel Geri's look.
The unforgettable outfit even holds the Guinness World Record for the most expensive piece of pop star clothing sold at an auction - after nabbing £41,320 in 1998.
Kate Moss
Supermodel Kate, 51, has sported Union Jack on many occasions over the years, serving endless 'patriotic' fashion moments.
Most recently, Kate wore a jacket featuring the flag to mark The Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022 - just months before Queen Elizabeth's death in September of that year.
She wore the ensemble while joining Naomi Campbell, 52, on an open-top bus for the 1990s Times of Our Lives celebration, which rode down The Mall.
Kate wasn't the only celebrity to jump on the trend for the Platinum Jubilee as Cliff Richard also sported a Union Jack blazer for the 2022 celebrations.
Fashion designer Jasmine Guinness also wore the flag while marking Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee ten years earlier in 2012.
It was not the first time Kate proudly sported the flag as she famously launched London Fashion Week in 1997 by wearing a Union Jack sweater.
In 2016, Kate also draped an actual Union Jack over her shoulders while posing for a Vogue photoshoot.
Taylor Swift
Though she is American, Taylor, 35, has proved she is no stranger to a Union Jack and famously sported a head-to-toe Britannia ensemble on stage.
In 2013, Taylor kicked off her performance at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show wearing a Union flag-print mini-dress.
Her outfit was a surprising choice given the show took place in New York rather than London, but it has become one of her most memorable looks.
The Shake It Off hitmaker strutted her stuff in a blazer mini dress featuring the flag, which billowed out into a dramatic cape behind her.
She added to her look with matching peep-toe heels and a tiny top hat as she embraced all things British with the ensemble.
Rita Ora
Following in Taylor's footsteps, singer Rita, 34, also wore a flag-themed look while taking to the stage in New York just two years later.
Rita put on a very arty display as she stepped out in a distressed leather jacket painted with a Union Jack across it.
She made sure to turn heads as she performed at Fashion Rocks 2014 in Brooklyn, which was aptly presented by Three Lions Entertainment.
Around the same time, Rita also draped herself in an actual Union Flag in the music video for her 2015 track Body On Me.
In the video, she put on a racy display as she wore little else while draped in the flag and danced along to her sexy lyrics.
At the time, Rita described the music video as her 'most intimate' one yet as she teased the cheeky scenes.
Dua Lipa
Joining the long list of pop stars jumping on the Union Jack trend, Dua, 29, also rocked a 1960s style ensemble during her notable BRIT Awards performance.
The Levitating hitmaker took to the stage at the 2021 ceremony at the O2 Arena in a Union Jack blazer mini dress.
She then stripped off the coat to reveal she was wearing a matching Union Jack mini skirt underneath, which gave a cheeky flash of her thong and stockings.
The singer entertained fans as she ran through a medley of some of her biggest hits at the star-studded ceremony.
Dua's choice of ensemble appeared to be a nod to Geri's headline-making dress, which she wore at very the same awards show some 24 years earlier.
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In the first major media appearance of her album promo campaign, with comedian Ziwe, Rapp confirmed she'd still not received any media training before going on to discuss her 4.5-star rating on celebrity foot rating site WikiFeet ('I'm so angry, my friends have five!)', whether her great-grandparents owned slaves (she suspects they did) and which she 'gave less of a fuck about: women's rights or gay rights'. (Gay rights, for the record.) But I wonder if – refreshing though it may be – this no-holds-barred persona might sometimes work against Rapp, preventing her from being taken in earnest while seeding the idea that, in her company, anything goes. The day before our interview, Rapp held a Q&A for fans in London that was reportedly derailed by a small group who appeared to have had too many of the Reneé-themed cocktails. Rapp says now that she doesn't feel pressure to be consistently 'iconic' or chill in her press appearances – but she doesn't deny that this Q&A didn't go to plan. Rapp had been looking forward to getting into her new album with fans who cared about the nerdy detail. Instead, she struggled to hear their questions over the disorderly minority. 'Honestly, it just made me sad.' The real sour note came afterwards, when she and Towa Bird – her British musician girlfriend – were rushed by fans while trying to get in a lift. I try to clarify exactly what happened, but Rapp seems unsure of the details herself. 'To be honest, I kept my head down.' But she has no doubt about how it made her feel. 'People running after you, into a fucking elevator bank – it's such weird behaviour,' Rapp says, outraged. 'I was so pissed, I was so upset. I was like: 'You don't get to chase my girlfriend and me – that's not fine'.' At the same time, she sees it as part of the deal of being famous. 'I don't like to be disrespected, but I also understand that I've signed up for this shit, to an extent.' Indeed Rapp's truest ambition was to be a pop star; she got into acting, she's said, as a means to an end. As a child growing up outside Charlotte, North Carolina, she wanted to be Beyoncé – and to get out of her small, now Maga-voting town, Huntersville. 'I just didn't feel very comfortable there,' she says, pointing to her showbusiness aspirations and her emerging sexual identity. Well before she first came out (as bisexual, in 2022; she now identifies as a lesbian), Rapp was the only white girl within her friend group, she says. Her mother would tell her to never turn right out of their neighbourhood – it wasn't safe for her and her friends. 'Everybody has rifles, and if you look at them the wrong way, they will shoot you,' Rapp recalls. Today, she says, 'there're people who live in the neighbourhood that I grew up in, who don't speak to my parents because I'm out.' It doesn't bother Rapp or her family, she says with forceful disdain. 'I've never asked for the approval of conservative white bigots – I'm certainly not going to start now.' She is equally outspoken about Palestine: speaking at the GLAAD Media awards in April 2024, she called for an 'immediate ceasefire and permanent ceasefire', and today has no qualms about denouncing 'the genocide' under way. When I ask if she's ever been advised not to comment, or to use different phrasing, Rapp doesn't say she hasn't. 'It's interesting, people would often mask it as 'That verbiage may make people uncomfortable.' I would argue that people being slaughtered makes me uncomfortable and should in fact make you uncomfortable.' Rapp feels obliged to speak out not just because it's the right thing to do but, she says, because it's so much harder for non-white women. She admits she was shocked when she first moved to New York in 2019, to join Mean Girls on Broadway and discovered 'that people are still conservative bigots there'. Rapp starred in the show for about seven months before Covid brought it to a premature close. Now living with Bird in a 'seemingly white-liberal-ass neighbourhood' of Los Angeles, Rapp says there are 'extremists' a few doors down, with signs in the windows warning 'We're armed'. 'Especially with our current administration, it's just so in your face – the hate for people who could be considered 'other',' she says. 'There's just direct hate, and it's so loud.' When I ask Rapp where she got the confidence to speak her mind, she answers simply: 'I have phenomenal parents.' Her father, Charles, and mother, Denise, instilled in Rapp and her brother the importance of hard work and personal accountability. 'They were just always like: 'Be accountable to yourself, to your friends, to people you don't know,'' she says. What Rapp took away was that 'there's no shame in being wrong, necessarily'; what mattered was being able to 'look in the mirror' and hold your head up high. Though she is grateful for that foundation, it wasn't always easy: even when Rapp was very young, her parents didn't hold back in their feedback on her performances. Rapp recently claimed that Denise even gave her daughter an alliterative name, 'just in case' she wanted to become a pop star. Today her parents are among only a handful of people who she can count on to be brutally honest with her, along with Bird – and maybe 'two people' on her team.'I don't trust anyone,' she says, 'and I don't say that in a 'Oh, no, I feel lonely!' way – I know that there are so many people who are never going to be honest with me. I think everyone is lying to me, all the time.' It perhaps explains her own premium on public-facing authenticity. Even when she says she loves to lie, it seems it's only about the things that don't matter. I put it to Rapp that, where other pop stars might be blandly noncommittal, her own strategy for getting around difficult questions she doesn't want to answer is to deploy humour. 'Exactly,' she says, like I'm her pupil giving her a correct answer. Of course, a veneer of authenticity can also be a way of obfuscating what someone really thinks. Her single Leave Me Alone is a prime example: the line where Rapp crows 'I took my sex life with me, now the show ain't fuckin'!' went viral for seeming to allude to her departure from The Sex Lives of College Girls (there were rumours that cast members had questioned her sexuality). Online, the show's fans decried the line as tacky and disrespectful of the role that made her famous; Rapp's fans said she was only being 'iconic' again. Rapp only stirred the pot further in her interview with Ziwe, describing Sex Lives as being 'such a good experience' in a way that played equally as sarcastic or sincere. 'I wish I could go back,' she said, deadpan. Even whip-smart Ziwe seemed to fall for it, inquiring: 'Really?' 'Nope!' Rapp shot back. When I tell her about the online debate raging over her intentions, Rapp gives a Cheshire cat grin. 'It's like Beyoncé said: 'You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation.'' Having previously approached songwriting as an exercise in truth-telling, Rapp discovered with this album that she could embellish her experiences and even make things up without sacrificing emotional truth. She doesn't feel the need to respond to speculation about what her songs are about. I ask Rapp if she gave her former Sex Lives co-stars a heads-up about the 'show ain't fuckin'' line. 'I didn't write it,' she says instantly. I'm momentarily flummoxed. Rapp spies her chance and runs with it. 'I've not heard of that show, is it good?' she continues, cocking her head as though earnestly engaged. It takes me a beat too long to realise – she's messing with me, right? 'Yep.' Reneé Rapp's new album, Bite Me, is released on 1 August.

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