Is Meghan's Oprah interview dress inspired by Wallis Simpson, the royal she is repeatedly compared to?

Meghan Markle's look in her upcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey is very different from her go-to casual look, and viewers have been trying to decipher the meaning behind her new bold style.

For the controversial tell-all interview, Meghan wore her hair up in a bun instead of her usual flowing locks. According to beauty expert Sonia Haria, she apparently did it to "draw all the attention" to the eyes, which "holds a lot of the emotions" and "adds a bit of weight and drama." She wore heavy black eyeliner, which was said to be inspired by Princess Diana's makeup in her BBC Panorama interview.

However, a recent report in Mail Online claims that it's not her mother-in-law but instead, another controversial British royal who inspired her look. Her center-parted hair and floral dress are eerily similar to a look worn by Wallis Simpson.

In the interview, Meghan is wearing a belted black Giorgio Armani dress adorned with a lotus flower design. According to The Telegraph, lotus symbolises rebirth, self-regeneration, and enlightenment, and is symbolic for the couple in the sense that they refuse to accept defeat regardless of the challenges brought their way.

The dress is however very similar to what Simpson wore for a portrait that was taken before King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry her in 1936. The royals' respective V-neck outfits have some differences as well. While Meghan's dress has long sleeves and is mostly black, Wallis' dress was short-sleeved and had a floral design throughout.

"My initial thoughts were that Meghan is borrowing Diana's look with the black outfit & heavy heavy eyeliner. And she seems to have styled her hair like Wallis Simpson," one Twitter user wrote, while another commented: "Well blow me down ... Meagain has presented herself for the Oprah interview as a reincarnation of Wallis Simpson."

A third one claimed that Meghan's stiff posture in the Oprah chat is also similar to Wallis' posture in her and her husband's joint interviews.

While some, including Prince Harry, compare Meghan to his late mother Princess Diana for their similar struggles with the British media, others say she is much more similar to Wallis Simpson. The two Duchesses are repeatedly compared to each other as the American divorcees both married British royals who stepped down from their royal duties. While Prince Harry quit as a senior royal after tussles with British media over alleged unfair treatment of his wife, his great-uncle King Edward abdicated the British throne within a year of his rule to marry Wallis.

Wallis was not accepted as the future queen by the British monarchy as well as by Parliament for being twice divorced. The explanation given by the royal family at the time was that being the head of the Church of England was a part of Edward's duties as a king, this forbade him from marrying a divorced woman.

After his abdication, his younger brother George VI, father of the current monarch Queen Elizabeth II, took the reins of the Kingdom. Many historians argue that Wallis Simpson being a divorcee was just a pretense and the British establishment wanted Edward's abdication because of his political opinions and an apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions.

"The Establishment wanted rid of Edward VIII. They found his fascist-sympathising politics dodgy and they feared his outspoken, witty wife. They felt much safer with the shy, stammering Duke of York and his homely, aristocratic Scottish wife," Andrew Norman Wilson wrote for Mail Online.

After Edward's abdication, he and Wallis were allowed to take the title of the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, but the socialite was not given Her Royal Highness title. She was the only known Duchess not entitled to use HRH honour, until the Duchess of Sussex was also directed not to use it after her exit as a senior royal last year.