Queen Elisabeth’s Art Deco Bandeau

The tiara was made for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium in the early twentieth century. It’s relatively small, featuring a simple diamond zig-zag design punctuated by round diamonds and crossed by diamond laurel wreath. It’s also a convertible tiara — it can be worn as a necklace (a choker, more specifically), atop the head as a traditional tiara, or across the forehead as a bandeau.

Queen Elisabeth seemed to prefer some of her other tiaras to this simpler bandeau, and she eventually gave the tiara to her daughter-in-law, Queen Astrid, who wears it in the portrait pictured above. Sadly, Astrid didn’t have long to make use of the piece; she died in a car accident at the age of only 29.

The next wearer of the tiara was Princess Lilian, the second of wife of Astrid’s husband, King Leopold III. Along with wearing the bandeau as a tiara (supplemented with extra diamonds, likely the large round diamonds from the Nine Provinces Tiara), Lilian sat for a portrait wearing the piece as a choker.

But again, the tiara was passed along to another member of the royal family relatively quickly. Queen Paola, then Princess of Liège, began wearing the tiara in the 1960s, nestling the sparkler in her fashionable bouffant hairstyles.

This photograph of Paola, taken in the summer of 1968, gives you an idea of the length of the bandeau.

Queen Paola wore the tiara regularly both before and after her husband’s accession to the Belgian throne. Here, she wears it during the celebrations of the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in 2004. (You’ll also notice that she’s wearing the base of the Nine Provinces Tiara as a choker necklace!)

While she often chose the Nine Provinces for diplomatic gala events, she wore the Art Deco Bandeau sometimes on those occasions, too. Here, she wears the tiara during a state visit from the President of Portugal in 2005.

In 2010, Queen Paola chose the tiara for another major royal wedding: the nuptials of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden.

She also chose it for an important family affair two years later: the pre-wedding ball held for her great-nephew, Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg, in October 2012.

Paola has also generously lent the tiara to other family members on multiple occasions. In December 1999, she loaned the sparkler to her new daughter-in-law, Mathilde d’Udekem d’Acoz, for her royal wedding.

And in July 2014, she loaned the tiara to Elisabetta Rosboch von Wolkenstein for her wedding to Prince Amedeo of Belgium (Paola’s grandson).

Queen Paola is, by all accounts, still the owner of the bandeau tiara today. She passed the Nine Provinces along to Queen Mathilde in 2013, but the Art Deco Bandeau remains in her collection, even though she’s no longer wearing tiaras in public. Most recently, Paola has loaned the bandeau to her daughter, Princess Astrid, who wears it above for the German state banquet at Laeken in March 2016.