Princess Christina’s Most Sparkling Four Button Tiara Moments

One of my favorite things about royal jewelry is the watching the same women style the same pieces in different ways across the decades. Today, to celebrate the upcoming birthday of Sweden’s Princess Christina, I’ve got a look at some of the ways she’s worn the family’s Diamond Four Button Tiara over half a sparkling century.

Princess Christina began wearing tiaras at gala events in Sweden in the 1960s. To accommodate the family’s increased tiara needs as Christina and her three sisters began their tiara-wearing careers, four antique diamond buttons from the vaults were arranged on a simple tiara frame. All four of the sisters have worn the tiara, but Princess Christina has perhaps reached for it most often. Above, at the Nobels in December 1968, she wears the tiara with a fabulous bouffant hairstyle and diamond and sapphire jewels from the collection of her mother, Princess Sibylla.

A year later, in December 1968, Christina paired the Four Button Tiara with the earrings and necklace from the Napoleonic Amethyst Parure at the Nobels. About a decade later, the heavy amethyst necklace was placed on a tiara frame by her sister-in-law, Queen Silvia.

In 1974, Christina married businessman Tord Magnuson. She lost her place in the line of succession, as well as the prefix Her Royal Highness, in the process, and became Princess Christina, Mrs. Magnuson. But because the Swedish royal family’s numbers had dwindled precipitously during the twentieth century, she was still often called upon to attend gala events with her brother, King Carl XVI Gustaf, even after her marriage to a commoner. Christina’s diplomatic skill, learned over years of royal events, often came in handy. Above, she wears the Four Button Tiara (this time with a short haircut) during a state visit from a controversial foreign head of state, President Tito of Yugoslavia, in the spring of 1976.

Christina’s affection for the Four Button Tiara continued through the 1980s. Here, she wears the tiara with another short hairstyle at the Nobels in 1982. She paired the tiara with diamond and sapphire jewels from her personal collection.

She wore the same tiara, earrings, and necklace for the Nobels in 1985. I’m also intrigued by the lovely diamond and sapphire brooch that she used to secure her Seraphim sash on this occasion.

Christina perched the Four Button Tiara on a raft of curls as the 1990s dawned, wearing the tiara for the King’s Dinner on the night after the Nobel Prize ceremony in 1991. She also wore a demi-parure that appears to be set with semi-precious gemstones–amethysts, and perhaps citrines and peridots.

A few months later, during the Norwegian state visit to Sweden in May 1992, she wore the Four Button Tiara with the same semi-precious suite and a purple evening dress. (Beside Christina is one of her older sisters, Princess Désirée, who wears the diamond tiara that she received from their step-grandmother, Queen Louise.)

At the Nobels in 1997, Christina took a turn on the dance floor with her husband, Tord Magnuson, wearing the Four Button Tiara with additional diamond and pearl pieces.

These days, it’s much rarer to spot Princess Christina wearing the Four Button Tiara. (When she’s wearing buttons these days, it’s more often the bigger Six Button Tiara from the family collection.) But she brought her old friend out of the vaults for another spin in December 2022, wearing the tiara and more diamonds for the King’s Dinner for the Nobel laureates. I love the way that the buttons peek out from her gray hair in this photograph!