The Kent City of London Fringe Tiara

Today in Windsor, one of the members of the Kent branch of the British royal family, Lady Gabriella Windsor, will marry her fiancé at St. George’s Chapel. In honor of her wedding day, we’ve got a look at the Kent City of London Fringe Tiara, a diamond tiara worn by two Kent brides, including Gabriella’s mother.

When Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark popped across the channel to marry the Duke of Kent in 1934, the wedding gifts were plentiful—after all, it wasn’t every day that a British prince married a real, honest-to-goodness princess. One of the sparkliest of those presents was the elegant Kent City of London Fringe Tiara. (Can you guess who was behind the gift? You’ve got it: it was the City of London!)

Some sources claim that Marina secured her bridal veil with the City of London Fringe Tiara, but Marina didn’t actually wear that particular tiara on her wedding day. She wore another very similar diamond fringe tiara: the Vladimir Fringe Tiara, which she borrowed from her mother, Princess Nicholas of Greece and Denmark. Marina’s father was a Greek prince, but her mother was a Russian grand duchess, and this fringe tiara was an inheritance from her mother, Grand Duchess Vladimir.

Both tiaras feature diamond fringes and spikes, but their profiles are slightly different, and the position of the spikes on the Vladimir Fringe makes it appear to have a more solid base than the City of London Fringe. The fringes of the Vladimir are also noticeably farther apart.

After Marina’s wedding, the Vladimir Fringe Tiara was returned to her mother, and Marina began using her own fringe tiara regularly. Throughout her life as a royal duchess, Marina reached for the Kent City of London Tiara often for gala events. She had multiple opportunities to wear the tiara, for example, during the coronation year of 1937.

Here, decades later, she wears the tiara at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London for a ceremony dedicating the new chapel of the Order of the British Empire. She’s wearing the robes of the order for the service as well.

And here, the princess wears the tiara with more jewels, including her diamond girandole earrings, in a glamorous portrait taken by the iconic photographer Cecil Beaton.

Thirty years after Marina’s wedding, the City of London Fringe Tiara finally got the chance to appear on a royal bride. Marina loaned the tiara to her daughter, Princess Alexandra, for her wedding in 1963. Alexandra married Angus Ogilvy, the second son of the 12th Earl of Airlie, in a grand ceremony full of royal guests at Westminster Abbey. Her appearance at the Abbey in a family fringe tiara echoed the bridal attire of her first cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1947.

When Marina died in 1968, the tiara stayed with the Kents. The piece was inherited by her younger son, Prince Michael. Today, it’s his wife, Marie Christine, who wears the sparkler. Most notably, she wore it for the reception after their wedding in Vienna in 1978. (More on their wedding here!)

Although this particular fringe tiara can’t be worn as a necklace, Princess Michael has played about with it a bit anyway, sometimes even adding a velvet backing and topping it with a diamond necklace to really reinforce the kokoshnik style of the piece.

In May 2019, a new generation of the Kent family wore the City of London Fringe for the first time. Lady Gabriella Windsor (daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent) chose the tiara for her wedding to Thomas Kingston at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, pairing it with a veil and a dress by Luisa Beccaria. Predictably, a press release from Buckingham Palace on the wedding day mixed up Marina’s two fringes again, stating that Marina had worn the City of London Fringe Tiara for her own wedding. Thankfully, readers of The Court Jeweller, you know better!