Crown Princess Mary’s Elegant Edwardian Tiara

In April 2015, Crown Princess Mary arrived for a special concert celebrating her mother-in-law’s 75th birthday in Aarhus. She brought along a glittering surprise with her: a new-to-her antique necklace set with diamonds, rubies, and spinels.

Mary wore the necklace with a pair of coordinating diamond drop earrings. At the time, television commentators on the broadcast of the event stated that the necklace was convertible, able to be placed on a frame and worn as a tiara.

Not long afterward, Danish media outlets (including Billed-Bladet) began reporting that the convertible necklace/tiara and the diamond drop earrings were both purchased by Mary from an auction in 2012. The catalogue from a sale held at the Bruun Rasmussen auction house in Copenhagen on March 1, 2012, confirmed the reports.

The tiara/necklace and earrings were sold together as Lot #289 in the auction, described in the catalogue as a “diamond jewellery set comprising a necklace and a pair of later ear screws set with numerous rose and old mine-cut diamonds, circular-cut rubies and spinels, mounted in 14k gold and silver.” The notes added that “one stone [was] missing” from the necklace, which was made “circa 1900-1910.” The auction estimate for the set was given as €4000-5350, but the jewels exceeded that estimate significantly, selling for €8050.

When it was purchased, the convertible jewel needed some renovation work before it could be worn, which may help to explain the three-year gap between the time it was purchased and Mary’s public debut in the jewels. Though the auction catalogue noted that the necklace was originally worn as a tiara, a frame for the piece wasn’t advertised as part of the auction lot, suggesting that a new one may have had to be made after the sale. Mary wore the jewel for the first time as a tiara at a gala in March 2016, and then shortly afterward, she wore the tiara a second time for a dinner during the Mexican state visit to Denmark that April (pictured above).

Around the same time, she wore the tiara and diamond drop earrings as she and Frederik posed for the famed photographer Mario Testino in a portrait session in Denmark. The resulting photographs were published in the August 2016 of Vogue Australia.

Soon afterward, however, the diamond drop earrings were largely relegated to the recesses of Crown Princess Mary’s jewelry box. She wore a new pair of earrings with the tiara for a dinner during the Icelandic state visit to Copenhagen in January 2017.

The new earrings were made to match the tiara, echoing the tiara’s central design element.

Crown Princess Mary has largely worn the tiara and earrings together as a matched set ever since. She arrived in the jewels for a gala dinner in Oslo in May 2017 to celebrate the 80th birthdays of King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway.

Here’s another look at the tiara and earrings from the Oslo appearance in 2017.

A year later, in May 2018, Mary wore the tiara and earrings together with a gorgeous beaded evening gown for a 50th birthday gala in Copenhagen for her husband, Crown Prince Frederik.

Though she usually wears the grand ruby parure for the annual New Year’s Levee in Copenhagen, Mary made an exception in January 2019, wearing the Edwardian tiara and new earrings for the occasion instead.

One of the grandest appearances for the set came in Tokyo in October 2019, when she wore them with a dramatic evening gown during the enthronement celebrations for Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako.

More recently, we saw Mary wear the tiara and earrings during the Golden Jubilee celebrations for her mother-in-law, Queen Margrethe II. She wore the jewels in September 2022 for a special concert at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. She was joined by Crown Prince Frederik and their two eldest children, Prince Christian and Princess Isabella, at the event. Time flies fast—for fun, scroll back up to the top of this article to see how much Christian and Isabella have grown since Mary’s debut in the necklace. Seven years makes a big difference!