Queen Maxima’s Tassel Earrings

Maxima has been wearing this pair of modern tassel earrings since the days when she was still Princess Maxima. The earrings feature strings of beads—many of us believe they’re garnets—gathered together by three pavé-set diamond ribbons. Above, Princess Maxima wears them for a ceremony at Bellevue Palace in Berlin during a state visit to Germany in April 2011.

Maxima chose the earrings for one of the events on the most important day of her royal life: the day she became Queen of the Netherlands. For the water pageant following the inauguration of her husband, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, on April 30, 2013, she paired the earrings with a gown in a deep shade of burgundy. (It’s this dress.) It was a cool evening, so most of the time, the gown was covered up with a tan wrap. Her other jewels for the occasion included the Diamond Trellis Bracelet and one of the East Indies Bracelets.

She wore the earrings in September 2015 for Prinsjesdag, the annual opening of the Dutch parliament. The earrings picked up on the deep red colors of the embroidery on her gown, and were echoed in the color of her leather gloves.

Here, she wears the garnet earrings in October 2015 for the opening of a conference on children’s education at museums at the Rijksmuseum.

And here, we got a good look at the earrings during a press conference in Buenos Aires in October 2016.

Maxima has continued to wear the earrings regularly, both for prominent diplomatic events and more routine daily engagements and visits. Here, she wears them for a visit to the Center for Youth and Family in The Hague in March 2017.

And here, in October 2019, she wears them during a tour of the Translational Brain Laboratory in Amsterdam.

She’s also worn them on occasion during the pandemic. In October 2020, she wore them for a meeting on the 40th anniversary of the Breast Cancer Association of the Netherlands in the World Forum in The Hague.

One of her most recent appearances in the garnet and diamond tassel earrings came in November 2021, when she attended the Prince Bernhard Culture Foundation awards ceremony.

Queen Maxima also owns a pair of tassel earrings with a diamond and ruby top section and tassels made of seed pearls and ruby beads. These look more like traditional tassel earrings from India in their design. Here, Maxima wears them for the official welcome ceremony at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam during the Singapore state visit in November 2018.

Here, you can really see the sparkle of the diamonds and rubies on the tassel earrings. This image was taken in May 2019, as Willem-Alexander and Maxima visited Neder-Betuwe.

Queen Maxima paired the earrings with a polka dot dress in September 2019, when she attended a forum for entrepreneurs in Apeldoorn.

Most recently, we also saw the diamond, ruby, and pearl tassel earrings in November 2021. She wore the earrings with a red and brown ensemble for the opening of the Pieter Teyler House at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.