After a famously damning verdict on the Brexit process, the supreme court queen and her spider pin became an unlikely viral sensation. Who better to model this season’s brooches?
The woman who used to be president of the highest court in the land is surveying a table bedecked in brooches, mostly with an insect theme. Cooperative and engaged, she looks for all the world like a person who is enjoying herself, nothing on her face but the cool clarity for which she is known; not a trace of impatience at the frippery. You would think a photographic studio in London was as natural a habitat as a courtroom.
Lady Hale has made history a number of times, of course – the first woman to be appointed to the supreme court, the youngest and first female commissioner to be appointed to the Law Commission. She has always been popular in legal circles as a reformer, known as the “Beyoncé of the legal world” owing to her pioneering reputation among students and young lawyers. It must strike her as rum that her breakthrough viral moment came as a result of the spider brooch she sported at a critical point on the road to Brexit. It doesn’t take much to raise other judges’ eyebrows with accessories, and colleagues have long remarked on her marvellous collection, which hovers on the edge of Halloween.
