Princess Diana’s Bejeweled Butterfly Suite

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The earliest appearance of the butterfly suite that I’ve been able to find came during a royal visit to British Columbia in May 1986. For a visit to Prince George, Diana wore a Catherine Walker suit with a Graham Smith hat, accessorizing with butterfly earrings and a gold necklace with a matching butterfly slide enhancer.

Here’s a closer look at the butterfly earrings. Made of yellow gold, they’re set with diamonds and small dark blue gemstones. I’d wager that they’re probably sapphires.

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Here’s another look at Diana wearing the earrings and necklace from that Canadian trip in 1986.

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A few months later, in November 1986, Diana wore a very similar gold omega-style necklace during a trip to Saudi Arabia. Ayvee from Diana’s Jewels thinks that it’s the same necklace, worn without its butterfly enhancer, and I think she’s likely correct.

Diana also wore a cuff bracelet that coordinates with the earrings and the necklace. The piece, made of textured yellow gold, features diamond detailing and a pair of dark blue stones at each end. Above, Diana wears the bracelet as part of a stack on her right wrist for a visit to the Lord Gage Centre in Newham in September 1990. Diana continued to wear the bracelet on other occasions in the ’90s, even after she announced that she would no longer take on a regular slate of public engagements.

Here’s a closer view of the bracelet, worn second from the bottom in this stack.

In October 2018, pieces from the suite appeared again in public on Diana’s daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Sussex. She wore the earrings and the bracelet together in Sydney during a royal tour of Australia.

Here’s a closer look at one of the earrings from an afternoon reception hosted by Australia’s Governor General.

The shape of the earrings, which are larger at the top than on the bottom, means that they’re prone to turning while being worn. Above, you can see one of the earrings twisting a bit as Meghan wears it at the Sydney Opera House.

Meghan wore the earrings and the bracelet together again for another daytime engagement almost a year later. In September 2019, she wore the jewels in London for the launch of the Smart Works capsule collection.

Here’s another view of one of the earrings from that launch.

And here’s a look at the bracelet, which Meghan wore stacked with other gold and diamond pieces.

The bracelet has also made appearances on the Duchess at evening engagements. She wore it at the Royal Albert Hall in January 2019 for the charity premiere of a new Cirque du Soleil production in support of Sentebale.

Here’s a view of the bracelet on Meghan’s right wrist during that appearance.

And more recently, Meghan wore the bracelet with a Christopher John Rogers gown at the NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles. So far, we haven’t seen Meghan wear the necklace from the set in public, either with or without the butterfly enhancer. Its design really is a relic of the ’80s, so perhaps that part of the suite will be remaining hidden away for the moment.