The Diamond Art Deco Clip Brooch

Lots of the Queen’s brooches have been in her jewelry box for decades, but some pieces are much newer additions to her collection. Today’s brooch, the Diamond Art Deco Clip Brooch, seems to be one of these newer pieces.

Here’s a closer look at the brooch. The piece is a classic double clip brooch, a style popular in the 1930s and 1940s and often associated with Cartier. The brooch features a pair of diamond dress clips that can be worn separately or attached together to a frame for wear as a brooch. The Queen has several versions of clip brooches in her collection, and you’ll also see them worn by other British royal ladies, including the Countess of Wessex and the Duchess of Gloucester.

We don’t know how old this particular brooch is. It may be an antique example that has been more recently incorporated into the Queen’s collection, a new piece patterned on a familiar vintage style, or even a jewel that has long been in royal hands but only worn in public recently. Whatever the provenance, we know that the Queen began wearing the brooch around 2015. Above, she wears it at Newbury Racecourse in April of that year.

In June 2016, the Queen wore the clip brooch as she arrived at Hillsborough Castle in Belfast to begin a two-day tour of Northern Ireland.

One of the Queen’s most brilliant appearances in the brooch so far came in October 2018, when she wore it for engagements in Bracknell, including a visit to The Lexicon shopping center.

We saw the brooch recently in March 2020, during one of the Queen’s last engagments before COVID restrictions sent her into lockdown at Windsor Castle. She wore the brooch on a brightly colored dress for an audience at Buckingham Palace with Professor Mark Compton, Lord Prior of the Order of St John. Professor Compton was at the palace to present HM with the Order’s first-ever Service Medal in gold.