But the Reiss dress that made such an impression when the pair met this week was manufactured by women paid only 99p an hour in a poor suburb of the Romanian capital, the Daily Mail has discovered.

The camel-coloured ‘Shola’ design was produced for less than £15 by seamstresses earning significantly less than the average salary for textile workers in the Eastern European nation.

British fashion chain Reiss is one of the Duchess’s favourite brands. After she wore the dress to meet Barack and Michelle Obama, demand for it surged, causing the company’s website to crash and the dress to sell out within 24 hours.

It has been advertised for £600 on eBay and a £30 copy is being prepared by Tesco.Yesterday Reiss announced that the dress will be re-released in five to six weeks.

But that glamour is a far cry from the bleak working conditions of those who made it in Bucharest.

The 170 employees of clothing firm Rimcor Ex work in a factory which resembles an industrial compound, with bars on the windows, 8ft walls and solid metal fences around the periphery.

It is a block away from a high-rise Romany gipsy commune which last year became home to one of the world’s youngest mothers, apparently aged ten when she became pregnant with her cousin’s baby.

This week the Mail witnessed a half-naked child of about six picking his way through mounds of rotting food, and a dead kitten in pools of stagnant water nearby.

Locals said toddlers scavenged for food and their parents found scraps to sell, before returning to makeshift shelters.

One dressmaker said the typical £168-a-month salary for workers at the factory was above the country’s minimum wage.

But according to the nation’s National Institute for Statistics, it is £22 a month below the average net salary for the clothing industry in Romania, which joined the European Union in 2007.

Another worker, 44-year-old Juliana Haita, described conditions as ‘good’ and added: ‘This is normal for me. I’m used to it.’ Read More