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Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

Jewels and Roses for Queen Maxima

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Queen Maxima of the Netherlands attended the 50th celebration of the Rosarium Winschoten in Winschoten on Tuesday, where she posed alongside a new variety of rose named in her honor.

SIESE VEENSTRA/AFP/Getty Images

Maxima wore a large, statement-making hat for the occasion, plus a pair of colorful earrings.

SIESE VEENSTRA/AFP/Getty Images

Here’s a closer look at the earrings, which feature green and purple stones and diamonds. I believe these are by Amrapali, an Indian jewelry firm. They’re extremely similar to the lapis and diamond earrings by Amrapali worn by the Duchess of Cambridge. (More on those earrings, with an excellent close-up image, over here.)

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The bracelet stack has also been pared way, way down: only one (the cabochon gemstone bracelet) was visible as Maxima posed beside her rose.

A Double Brooch Day for Queen Elizabeth II

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Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated a pair of major anniversaries today, and to the delight of royal jewel lovers everywhere, she wore a different brooch for each occasion.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The Queen and the Duke began their morning with a train journey. Exactly 175 years (to the day!) after Queen Victoria became the first monarch to travel by train, the royal couple recreated her route. (Contrary to what we saw on Victoria, that original trip did not involve a railway on Robert Peel’s estate or a dramatic marital spat.)

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Following in their shared ancestor’s footsteps, HM and HRH traveled by train from Slough to Paddington Station in London. For the ceremonial trip, the Queen chose a brooch that she’s had since 1947: one of the Nizam of Hyderabad Rose Brooches.

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The engagement gave us an absolutely magical close-up of the brooch, which was made by Cartier. It was originally part of the now-dismantled Nizam of Hyderabad Tiara, one of the Queen’s wedding gifts.

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On Tuesday evening, the Queen and the Duke headed to Hampton Court Palace, where they celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Order of Companions of Honour. The order was established by the Queen’s grandfather, King George V, in June 1917.

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The anniversary was commemorated with a special evensong service at the palace. For this event, the Queen chose one of my absolute favorites from her brooch collection: the Jardine Star Brooch. (Learn more about this brooch over here!)

The Swedish Diamond Epaulette Earrings

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Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The Swedish royal jewelry collection is absolutely lousy with sparkling earrings, but today’s earrings, the Diamond Epaulette Earrings, surely take the prize for the most diamond-packed pair.

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The earrings’ most important appearance in recent memory came at the pre-wedding gala for Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel in June 2010. Victoria wore the earrings with a stunning one-shoulder gown. The neckline of the dress worked particularly well with the long earrings.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The earrings are called “epaulette” earrings because, well, that’s what they used to be. In days gone by, when royal men would wear elaborate, jewel-encrusted military uniforms, these diamond epaulettes rested on the shoulders of a particularly sparkly dress uniform. Reusing the epaulettes as earrings is a rather ingenious move; they’d never be worn in public today in their original form, so repurposing them has saved them from gathering dust in a royal vault — or, even worse, from being broken up.

Crown Princess Victoria has been the primary wearer of the earrings in recent years, but they’ve also been worn in public by another Bernadotte: Princess Madeleine, who paired them with her Modern Fringe Tiara at her father’s birthday gala in 2016.

JON OLAV NESVOLD/AFP/Getty Images

But it’s been Victoria who has gotten the most mileage out of the pair. She wore the earrings at the annual King’s Dinner for the Nobel Prize laureates in 2011; more recently, she wore them with the Baden Fringe Tiara in Oslo for the Norwegian royal birthday gala.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

What do you think of this bit of royal jewel recycling: an effective choice, or a bejeweled blunder?