Rewriting the royal jewellery rules
In the past year, Queen Camilla has dramatically changed the old style rules
The glorious autumnal weather has given way to the dreary damp cold of November. Then Queen Camilla wore a tiara that was last seen on the head of a queen in the Canadian Arctic in 1970. Yes, royal jewellery is back in the news!
In particular, I’m intrigued by how Queen Camilla has spent the past year rewriting the British royal jewellery rules. To paraphrase Ian Fleming’s famous quote from Goldfinger: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is a trend.
When Queen Camilla wore the Aquamarine Ribbon tiara to the white-tie diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace on November 19, we shifted firmly into that trend territory when it comes to wearable royal treasures.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch gave royal relations the exclusive rights to specific loaned pieces. She had a vast collection of priceless treasures tucked away in vaults — her extensive brooch collection, which included around a half dozen different diamond bow brooches, is worth hundreds of millions of dollars — yet wasn’t exactly generous when it came to lending items to other Windsor women. The result was that they’d wear the same items again and again. For instance, Kate, now Princess of Wales, repeatedly wore the Lover’s Knot tiara at almost every formal event.
It got to the point that royal watchers could predict who would wear what tiaras in the last years of Elizabeth II’s reign. Now, all bets are off as we wait to see what treasures are found in the back of a royal jewellery vault, dusted off, and worn for a banquet or reception.
In the past year, Queen Camilla changed the royal jewellery rules in two significant ways:
Royal women are wearing tiaras and other pieces of royal jewellery that were once exclusively reserved for just one royal woman. Significantly, it’s not a one-way loan system — Queen Camilla is also wearing items previously loaned to other royal women. This more flexible lending system is standard for many European royal families, who reserve specific items to worn by a queen, while the rest of their collection is shared by all royal women. Sweden is famous for its version of tiara musical chairs.
Queen Camilla and her dressers are also exploring the farthest depths of the jewellery collection that King Charles III inherited from his mother and finding pieces that suit her style. Given how many older pieces have suddenly reappeared on Windsor women in the past year, she may also be allowing female relations to go treasure hunting.
Here’s what I’ve got so far, in reverse order:
November 19, 2024: Queen Camilla wears the Aquamarine Ribbon tiara that was last worn by her sister-in-law, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, at the diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace. Its name comes from its design: five ornate interlocking ribbons of diamonds, each of which is set with a large oblong aquamarine.
Nothing is known about the tiara except its rare public outings. Queen Elizabeth II was seen wearing it just once during her reign, at a banquet in Yellowknife in 1970. That Arctic dinner marked the last time it was seen for more than four decades, prompting speculation that it had been broken apart with its stones used to “super-size” the Queen’s already large aquamarine tiara (the Court Jeweller has a detailed piece on the evolution of that tiara).
Then, in 2012, Sophie shocked royal watchers when she donned that Aquamarine Ribbon tiara for a dinner in Luxembourg ahead of a royal wedding and again the next year at another royal nuptuals in Sweden. (Confusingly, Sophie has another aquamarine-and-diamond tiara, which is convertable into a necklace.)
March 11, 2024: Queen Camilla wears an unusual aquaramine brooch that no royal watchers had seen at the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey. The top of the brooch features a round stone set in an upside down diamond filigree heart, while the bottom section features a heart-shaped aquamarine of roughly the same size, surrounded by diamonds. The two sections are connected by a chain. Though the palace revealed that it had belonged to Elizabeth II, royal jewellery lovers could find no photos of the late monarch wearing it. Soon after Camilla wore it, Norwegian royal expert Trond Noren Isaksen revealed that he’d identified it as originally belonging to Queen Alexandra (Elizabeth II’s great-great grandmother) because he had been granted access to a photographic inventory of Alexandra’s jewels.
June 25, 2024: Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, wears the Lotus Flower tiara that had been exclusively worn by Kate, Princess of Wales, to the state banquet for the Emperor and Empress of Japan. Originally made from jewels taken from a wedding present given to the Queen Mother in 1923, it was worn by her daughter, Princess Margaret — who loaned it just once, to her own daughter-in-law for her wedding tiara. It hadn’t been seen for years before Kate, Princess of Wales, wore it in 2022.
June 25, 2024: For the same Japanese state banquet, Queen Camilla wears the triple-strand diamond necklace that her daughter-in-law, Kate, wore to the coronation. The Diamond Festoon necklace was made of loose diamonds in 1950 and has since been worn by queens until Kate wore it at the coronation of Charles III in 2023. The necklace can be seen in official portraits taken by Hugo Burnand. Then, Queen Camilla wore it to the 2024 banquet.
December 5, 2023: Queen Camilla wore a massive, ornate diamond stomacher that originally belonged to the Queen Mother at the diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace. The intricately tasseled stomacher (named because they were so large they covered the front of a lady’s dress) is a mystery to royal watchers as no photos have emerged of the Queen Mother wearing it, and it doesn’t match anything given to her for her wedding.
November 22, 2023: At last November’s state banquet for the South Korean president at Buckingham Palace, Kate, Princess of Wales, wears a diamond tiara that hadn’t been seen in public for nine decades. The Strathmore tiara is a diamond garland of wild roses. It was a wedding gift in 1923 for the future Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother from her father, and hadn’t been seen since her husband became monarch in 1936.
No one was absolutely sure it was still in royal hands until a new image of that Strathmore tiara appeared in Geoffrey Munn’s authoritative book about tiaras in 2001 and it appeared at a 2002 Victoria and Albert Museum tiara exhibition. Even then, it took another 11 years before it was again worn by a royal woman.
November 22, 2023: At that same state dinner, the Duchess of Gloucester wears an Art Deco emerald-and-diamond tiara that originally belonged to her mother-in-law, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, and which hadn’t been seen in years (over the years, she has worn parts of the tiara, which like others of that age, can come apart into brooches, clips, etc.) Note: this doesn’t really fit the borrowing/pool trend, but its return is still timely.
November 12, 2023: Kate wears an ornate pair of pearl-and-diamond earrings that Elizabeth II wore once in 2003 at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nigeria. Kate wore what may be the matching brooch in 2017, nearly two decades after Elizabeth II wore it for what is believed to be the only time during a trip to South Korea in 1999. Kate would wear the brooch again at the lying-in-state of the late Queen in September 2022.
March 29, 2023: Queen Camilla wears a turquoise brooch given to then-Princess Elizabeth as a confirmation present from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1942. The small flower brooch has five turquoise petals, each outlined with diamonds, with a turquoise centre. Elizabeth II never wore it in public, as far as can be discerned. The only details came from palace officials who briefed reporters after Queen Camilla wore it at the start of a state visit to Germany.
WHAT’S NEXT?
On Tuesday, December 3, there will be another state banquet at Buckingham Palace for the Amir of Qatar. We’re bound to see a large turnout of royals, and they will be wearing historic royal jewels. But which ones?
I NEED YOUR ADVICE
I’m prepping for my annual year-end royal statistics roundups. It’s been an unusual year, which means there’s more than usual to talk about.
I’m mulling an Advent calendar of royal statistics, meaning a post a day from December 1 to December 24. Each would be much shorter than my usual weekly newsletter.
But that flurry of arrivals into your inboxes may be way too much for some readers, so I’m asking for your opinion — how many year-end royal statistic posts should I publish?
My latest appearance on Global TV’s The Morning Show on November 18:
My latest article for Zoomer: ‘Cooking & the Crown’: Inside Tom Parker Bowles’ New Cookbook, Plus 4 Royal Recipes
“You may be surprised by the simplicity of many of the recipes,” explains Parker Bowles in his book. Indeed, his first breakfast option is the porridge that his mother, Queen Camilla, eats every day in winter along with a teaspoon of honey from royal beehives. “Food is the great leveler. I want to strip away the pomp and circumstance and get right to the meat of the matter – a collection of wonderful recipes that you really want to cook from over two centuries of regal eating.”