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More Royal Jewels for Kate?

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The Duchess of Cambridge on a visit to Malaysia in 2012 [1]
This week, a story published in the Mail on Sunday trumpeted that the Duchess of Cambridge was undergoing a royally-sanctioned makeover ahead of her upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand. As is generally true with stories about Kate’s clothing, the piece quickly gained traction and was picked up by other press outlets, including Vanity Fair.

The Duchess of Cambridge [2]

Playing on the long-established tabloid trope that Queen Elizabeth II is unhappy with her granddaughter-in-law’s appearance, the story crowed that the monarch had ordered longer hemlines and more jewelry for Kate for the Aussie tour. Conveniently, that also gave the paper a chance yet again to publish photos of the duchess’s skirt flying up at inopportune moments — just to illustrate the story, I’m sure. It also gave their royal correspondent, Katie Nicholl, yet another chance to suggest that Kate’s clothes are too short, too tight, not royal enough, just plain wrong, etc., etc.

I’m not going to get into a debate here about Kate’s clothing and whether or not it’s right for a royal woman to wear — this isn’t a fashion blog, after all. But I will say that I’m pretty sure that a woman who is the monarch of sixteen countries probably doesn’t have lots of spare time to bust out a ruler and measure Kate’s skirts like she’s a high school student violating the dress code. Anyway. The part of Nicholl’s article that’s more pertinent to us is this bit:

Those jewels from the Delhi Durbar Parure – a collection of Indian gems gifted to the Royals in 1911 – had been passed from Royal hand to Royal hand by Queen Mary to The Queen Mother and then to the Queen who gave them to Diana as a wedding gift. They are also, appropriately, known as the Cambridge emeralds. Now, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Duchess of Cambridge – who wears her late mother-in-law’s sapphire engagement ring – will be packing precisely these kinds of jewels in April when she sets out in the footsteps of Diana on a tour Down Under.

Diana, Princess of Wales [3]

Because this story is from the Mail on Sunday, you knew already that there would be Diana comparisons involved. Here they’re made in terms of jewelry, especially that famous emerald choker that Diana wore as a bandeau in the 1980s (see the image at left). Although Kate has already worn some of the heirloom pieces from the Windsor collection — we talked about those here — Nicholl argues that Kate’s been told to pull a Diana and wear more jewels. She says that Kate “will be encouraged to wear the tiaras favoured by the Queen and Queen Mother.”

The main problem here is not the idea that Kate should wear more jewelry — goodness knows that I’m always in favor of people wearing more jewelry! It’s that the wrong royal is being used for the comparison. Although the media loves to make comparisons between Diana and her daughter-in-law, she’s not the example we should be following to try to predict what Kate will wear in 2014. Rather than looking to the tour wardrobe of the late Diana, Princess of Wales to try to decide what jewelry Kate might wear on a present-day tour, we should all be focusing instead on the jewels worn abroad by the Duchess of Cornwall.

As much as we all love tiaras, and while Diana and Fergie both wore them during royal tours in the 1980s, Camilla doesn’t wear them to dinners during royal tours today. (In fact, I think she’s only ever worn a tiara abroad twice: at the inauguration of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, and at a banquet in Uganda in 2007 where the queen was also present.) If the wife of the heir isn’t wearing tiaras while on royal tours, I’m afraid we probably can’t expect the wife of the heir’s heir to wear them, either. Even if there are dinners involved with the tour this April, I think we can expect Kate’s attire to be more suited for a less formal black-tie event than for a white-tie event where tiaras are worn.

Dressing the Queen [3]

Nicholl also says that Angela Kelly, the woman in charge of the daily upkeep to Elizabeth II’s jewelry, has been asked to step in and select Kate’s jewels for the tour. Kelly is one of the most trusted members of the queen’s staff, and she wrote a delightful book, Dressing the Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe, that details exactly how much planning goes into prepping the queen’s wardrobe. She’s clearly a busy woman — one whose duties this spring will include preparing Elizabeth II for a state visit to France in June to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day and a visit to Italy and the Vatican that will coincide with William and Kate’s oceanic tour in April. Coordinating the wardrobe of the head of state for such important occasions as a somber military anniversary and a first meeting with a fellow head of state, Pope Francis, will take up a considerable amount of Kelly’s time.

Kelly’s involvement here would seem too good to be true — and indeed, according to Judy Wade of Hello!, apparently it is:

I’d imagine that we’ll see Kate wearing jewelry in Australia and New Zealand much the same way that she did for her Canadian and South Seas tours: her usual low-key pieces, possibly mixed in with the occasional small royal heirloom piece. Of all of Nicholl’s claims, I’d say that her suggestion that Kate might borrow a brooch from HM for the tour could be the closest to fact, as Kate borrowed a brooch and a pair of earrings from the queen for the 2011 tour. Nicholl suggests either the Queen Mum’s ruby hibiscus brooch or Elizabeth II’s own golden wattle brooch as good candidates. But in terms of tiaras or jewels at the level of Diana’s Cambridge emeralds for this tour? Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath!

NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped still from a YouTube video; source here.
2. Photograph available via Wikimedia Commons; source here.
3. Cropped and edited still from a YouTube video; source here.
4. Promotional book cover image via Amazon; source here.

A Tale of Two Fringes

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Princess Charlotte of Monaco wears her tiara russe [1]
We interrupt your usual weekend jewel schedule with a special post inspired by this weekend’s wedding in Switzerland — stand by tomorrow for your usual chance to play jewel detective!
Yesterday, royal watchers (including yours truly) were shocked to see Tatiana Santo Domingo, the wife of Andrea Casiraghi, arrive at her religious wedding ceremony in Gstaad wearing a diamond fringe tiara. The Grimaldi family, including those members who have an HSH preceding their names, aren’t especially big on jewelry, particularly tiaras. The current Princess of Monaco, Charlene, didn’t wear a tiara at her own wedding ceremony, and she’s only worn one small aigrette in public (at her wedding reception). And while Princess Caroline does wear tiaras and other jewels, to my knowledge, Princess Stephanie has never worn a tiara in public at all.
So when Tatiana, Princess Caroline’s daughter-in-law, appeared in a diamond fringe, most of us were understandably excited. Attention immediately went to the jewel vaults of Monaco, and the tiara pictured above — Princess Charlotte’s diamond fringe tiara — was pegged as a potential candidate for Tatiana’s tiara.
The diamond fringe tiara belonged to Princess Charlotte of Monaco, the grandmother of the current sovereign prince. She received it from her father, Prince Louis II, as a wedding present in 1920. The piece, which has been attributed to Cartier, may have been inherited by Louis from his mother, Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton [2]. Mary Victoria was the daughter of a Scottish peer, the Duke of Hamilton, and her mother was a German princess, Marie Amelie of Baden [3]. The fringe tiara is apparently referred to by the Grimaldis as a tiara russe — this makes sense given the fringe tiara’s design roots in the kokoshnik-mad imperial court of the Romanovs. Ultimately, the provenance of the piece has never been made entirely clear, though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it is a nineteenth-century piece.
Princess Caroline’s
fringe necklace [6]
Charlotte was only photographed in the tiara once (to my knowledge). In the years since her death, many (including me) have identified a diamond fringe necklace worn by her granddaughter, Princess Caroline, as Charlotte’s tiara russe removed from its frame. But closer inspection of the two fringes suggests that they cannot be the same piece. Charlotte’s tiara has many more spikes than Caroline’s necklace (by my count, the necklace has 25 large spikes; Charlotte’s tiara has many more). The necklace also has very distinctive spoon-shaped small spikes, while the tiara has simpler, tapered small spikes [4]. You can see the small spikes of the necklace circled in the image on the right.
So if the fringe necklace worn by Caroline isn’t her grandmother’s tiara russe, where did it come from? This is a question that still needs to be answered. The necklace has been included in exhibitions of Princess Grace’s clothing and jewels, and in the context of those exhibitions, it has apparently been labeled as one of Grace’s pieces of jewelry. But I’ve never been able to find photographic evidence of Grace wearing the fringe necklace [5]. Was the fringe necklace owned by Princess Charlotte? Did Princess Grace ever own or wear the piece? Is it not an heirloom at all — is it possibly a newer piece that Princess Caroline owns outright? Did she perhaps either purchase it or receive it as a gift at some point? Does Albert own the necklace now, with some sort of loan agreement with Caroline? We don’t really have answers to these questions at this point.
Ultimately, though, it seems we have at least two diamond fringes associated with the Grimaldi family on our hands. Charlotte’s tiara russe is one of the two fringes; it may or may not be the same tiara that Tatiana wore on Saturday. If it is the same piece, it’s undergone a makeover. The frame of the tiara would have to have been altered significantly to allow the piece to be worn atop Tatiana’s head, rather than in the bandeau style worn by Princess Charlotte. Such changes may also have affected the shape of the tiara, possibly accounting for the slight difference in angle. The other fringe is the necklace worn by Princess Caroline. We can say for certain that the tiara russe and the diamond fringe necklace, so long considered to be the same piece of jewelry, are actually two separate pieces. 
We also know that the tiara worn by Tatiana is most certainly not her mother-in-law’s necklace set on a frame. Tatiana’s tiara also lacks the spoon-shaped smaller spikes that the necklace has. So is Tatiana’s bridal tiara the same piece as Princess Charlotte’s tiara russe, worn again after almost a century hidden away? Maybe — but it’s also possible that Tatiana’s tiara isn’t Charlotte’s tiara russe at all. There’s certainly enough money flowing through the various branches of the Grimaldi, Casiraghi, and Santo Domingo families to acquire a new tiara for Tatiana. Until we get firm confirmation from reliable sources about the provenance of any of these three items, let the speculation continue!
NOTES, PHOTO CREDITS, AND LINKS
1. Cropped and enlarged version of a photograph available via Wikipedia; source here.
2. See this post for a connection between the fringe tiara and the Hamiltons.
3. Marie Amelie was from a rather jewel-rich family; her mother was Stephanie de Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. Note that Ursula’s page on the tiara russe includes an image of Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara, owned by the British royal family (and worn by Elizabeth II on her wedding day), among the photographs of Charlotte wearing her fringe tiara. The two are not the same piece.
5. It should be noted, however, that the Cartier Pearl Drop Tiara, when exhibited, is generally also said to have been Grace’s. That tiara was Princess Charlotte’s, and today it is worn by Princess Caroline (though it reportedly belongs to her brother). Again, there’s never been any evidence that Grace ever wore that piece in public either, so categorizing the fringe necklace as one of Grace’s jewels may be a part of a larger trend of mislabeling items.
6. Cropped, enlarged, and altered low-quality version of photograph; original here. The excerpted portion of the image is being incorporated for the purpose of commentary, and as such, I believe its inclusion here adheres to the guidelines of fair use.