Programming Note, and a (New) Old Wedding

The blog is taking a brief break, and will return next week.

I leave you with this little piece of refreshed history, which - if you haven't seen it yet - is well worth a look:

Footage from the 1981 wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer is viewable for the first time in high quality 4K video, courtesy of the restoration efforts of the AP Archive. It's a British Movietone documentary on the event, complete with such flowery commentary, you'd think it dates from decades earlier.

Despite having seen many clips of this wedding in lower definition - and despite, to be totally honest, feeling a bit of overload from all these recent Diana features for the anniversary - this felt new. So many little details, so many little sparkles, to appreciate for the first time. I think it's worth a click.

Enjoy!

Royal Birthday of the Week: Danish Royals Celebrate Nikolai's 18th

Prince Nikolai, eldest son of Prince Joachim and his first wife, Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, celebrated his 18th birthday on Monday. He marked the occasion with a new official photo and a family dinner thrown by his grandmother, Queen Margrethe, on the royal yacht. You know, the usual 18th birthday stuff.

© Kongehuset

And so the whole family gathered (minus Crown Prince Frederik, who is in South Korea for IOC business), led by Margrethe in...a muumuu sort of thing? Living her best yacht rock life, in other words.

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Princess Marie, Princess Athena, Prince Henrik, Prince Joachim, Prince Nikolai, Countess Alexandra, Prince Felix

While Alexandra tried her hardest to single-handedly kill my love of statement shoes (too.many.straps., for starters), Marie picked up Margrethe's wavelength and gave it a trendier spin in Erdem, earning herself a nod as my best dressed for the night.

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Princess Isabella, Princess Josephine, Crown Princess Mary, Prince Vincent, Prince Christian

This blerghy Prada dress of Mary's goes all the way back to 2004! I've never loved it. But if you want to wear something that dates from before your four kids just because you can, well then, carry on.

Monday Tidbits for August 28: Happy Tiara News, Happy Baby News

Three pieces of good news to start your week, how about that?

--A year ago, news broke that Queen Victoria's Sapphire Coronet had been sold to an overseas buyer and been placed under a temporary export ban in the hopes of finding another buyer that would keep this Prince Albert-designed diamond and sapphire tiara in the United Kingdom. On Sunday we finally heard the outcome: the tiara is now a part of the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London! Excellent news, and such a perfectly appropriate home for this gem. It will go on public display in 2019.

Victoria & Albert Museum

Hedge fund tycoon William Bollinger - already the benefactor behind the museum's stunning jewelry gallery, which is named for him and his wife - stepped in, bought the tiara, and gifted it to the V&A. Queen Victoria's Sapphire Coronet was given as a wedding gift to Princess Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood, and was sold by her descendants to a dealer sometime in the past several years. The tiara's complete story has been updated and you can revisit it here.

--Roll on, Swedish royal baby boom! It was announced on Sunday that Princess Madeleine is expecting her third child with husband Chris O'Neill. The new addition joins Princess Leonor, 3, and Prince Nicholas, 2, and is due in March 2018.

--And finally, furry baby news: Prince Henrik's dog, Tillia, had eight puppies recently and the Danish royal court shared a picture of Henrik, Queen Margrethe, and four of their grandchildren with the new additions. They also shared a video of the puppies playing with at Fredensborg Palace with the crown princely family's dog, Grace. (A+ social media content from the Danish royal court, by the way.) [Instagram]

Kongehuset

Tidbits is your spot for topics we haven't covered on the blog. Please mind the comment policy, and enjoy!

Readers' Favorite Tiaras, The Rematch: #1. The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara

Some of the entries on your final list of ten favorite tiaras provoked heated competition, but in the end, none could touch the queen of them all. You called it iconic, you called it the epitome of tiara-ness, you called it your best. And it's my best, too:

The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara

The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara began as an 1893 wedding gift to the future Queen Mary from the "girls of Great Britain and Ireland" and was passed on to the future Queen Elizabeth II as a wedding gift in 1947. Along the way, the diamond design of festoons and scrolls lost the original top row of pearls and was separated from and then later reunited with its original diamond lozenge base. We revisited its whole history last year, click here to refresh your memory.

Queen Mary, with and without the pearls and the base; Queen Elizabeth II, with and without the base

This design really hits a lot of sweet spots: the scrolls give the tiara interest without being an overpowering motif; the top line isn't solid like a kokoshnik but is still fairly even all around; it's not an enormous diadem but it's far from small. It's almost a tiara designed for universal approval.

Given that, its spot on the top of your countdown (both in 2011 and now) probably doesn't come as a surprise. With countless appearances in action - it is essentially the Queen's favorite tiara; she is said to refer to it simply as "granny's tiara" - and countless appearances in portraits, on stamps, on money, on you name it, the Girls has earned its iconic status. Number one indeed.

And that, my friends, is it! I've loved all the tiara enthusiasm around here this month, and I'm so glad so many of you have joined in. Let's review the results, shall we?

50% British, 20% Dutch, and 30% Scandinavian. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of these tiaras are represented by families with some of the largest and most famous tiara collections in the world. And most have had active public lives, so to speak, giving us plenty of opportunities to explore their splendor potential. The more we see and the more we know, the more we like.

Any surprises? How'd your faves do? You can go back through all the posts from the rematch by clicking here. 

One last note, for the curious: here's how your top 10 shook out in our original Readers' Favorite Tiara vote:

Readers’ Favorite Tiaras, The Rematch: #2. The Fife Tiara

Some of the tiaras on your list get popularity boosts from the fact that they’re worn all the time, often by very famous figures. This tiara, on the other hand, racked up most of its appearances well over a century ago with very little since and hardly any public exposure. That’s not about to stop it from taking home your runner up ribbon:

The Fife Tiara

The Fife Tiara was a wedding gift to Princess Louise of Wales, the oldest daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, for her marriage to the Earl of Fife in 1889. The tiara has diamonds mounted in silver and gold and the design is dominated by a series of pear-shaped diamonds that hang freely in a Gothic-inspired diamond framework. More large pear-shaped diamonds alternate with round diamonds along the top of the tiara. One can only image that this diadem would be blindingly sparkly in action.

Princess Louise

An identical design was shown as part of a display of the work of Paris jeweler Oscar Massin in 1878, and he is thus assumed to be the designer of the Fife Tiara. This is sometimes said to have been a gift from her parents, but contemporary reporting of her wedding gifts attributed it to the Earl (who was made the Duke of Fife by Queen Victoria right after the wedding). Her parents' gift, on the other hand, is described as a classic convertible diamond fringe tiara.

Princess Louise

Princess Louise was given the title of Princess Royal but didn’t play a large role in the royal family and took a backseat to her mother and sister, Princess Victoria, both of whom were considered prettier, and to her more notably married sister, Queen Maud of Norway. Apparently a rather difficult person to make conversation with, she earned herself the title "Her Royal Shyness" and was most known for her talents in the realms of music and fishing. Her marriage to the Duke, who was 18 years older, seems to have done her a world of good - as, no doubt, did the escape from the smothering atmosphere of her parents' home. She was one of the first princesses to marry a subject rather than a prince but Queen Victoria approved of the union, noting that the groom was extremely rich.

Louise, also wearing her fringe necklace/tiara from her parents

Louise had three children: a stillborn son followed by two daughters, Princesses Alexandra and Maud. Because it was known in advance that there would be no Fife son to inherit the title, Queen Victoria made a special dispensation for inheritance in the female line. Accordingly, Princess Alexandra became the Duchess of Fife in her own right when her father died. Later she was also known as Princess Arthur of Connaught through her marriage.

Alexandra, Duchess of Fife

The Fife Tiara passed to Princess Alexandra and she, as Duchess of Fife, wore it to the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937. Alexandra was predeceased by her own son, so the title – and the tiara - passed down to her nephew, James Carnegie. So far as we know, the tiara is still with the family. It seems the only modern example we have of the Fife Tiara in use is one glimpse of it on the current Duchess of Fife.

The current Duchess of Fife

Several tiaras have been, at one point or another, associated with the Fife branch of the family in addition to this diamond masterpiece: the convertible fringe necklace tiara Louise received from her parents, a diamond floral tiara that (at the very least) bears close resemblance to one made famous by Downton Abbey, Princess Maud was seen wearing Queen Alexandra’s amethysts at the 1937 coronation, and the last known appearance in use of Queen Victoria’s Emerald and Diamond Tiara was on a past Duchess of Fife. So much intrigue in that list, and few answers about what might still be in the collection today.

I can only assume that the Fife Tiara was a favorite of Princess Louise, judging from how often she selected it for portraits, and I can’t blame her one bit. It’s substantial yet light; delicate despite the extreme carat weight that must be present here. Perhaps it’s for the best that we don’t see it in use these days. The sparkle might blind you. (….NAH. Just kidding. It’s in desperate need of a proper outing.)

Did the Mighty Fife earn a spot on your personal list?

Readers’ Favorite Tiaras, The Rematch: #3. The Dutch Sapphire Tiara

I think it’s fair to say that your third-place tiara owes its recent surge in popularity to its most recent wearer. New user, new fans!

The Dutch Sapphire Tiara  
Shown in the setting used by Queen Máxima for King Willem-Alexander’s inauguration

The Dutch Sapphire Tiara, featuring a row of large sapphires nestled at the bottom of a diamond diadem like stained glass windows beneath Gothic arches in the sparkliest cathedral ever, was commissioned in 1881 by King Willem III as a gift for his wife, Queen Emma. The detachable central large sapphire is a whopping 44 carats and the tiara features en tremblant settings, meaning that some of the stones will tremble and sparkle with every movement. Some of those large top diamonds can also be detached for use with a separate tiara worn by Princess Mabel on her wedding day, a piece often referred to as the sapphire tiara’s “second setting”.

Emma

Although the Dutch Sapphire Tiara is often referred to as the Mellerio Sapphire Tiara (including, in the past, on this blog), it was not created by the jeweler Mellerio dits Meller. The Mellerio misunderstanding seems largely due to the existence of an 1867 tiara sketch by Oscar Massin, a frequent Mellerio collaborator, which is similar in design. The Dutch royal collection also includes other Mellerio/Massin pieces, so these royals and those jewelers weren’t strangers.

Juliana

But evidence that attribution was incorrect has been around for some time and has been further confirmed in recent years. In his book Mellerio dits Meller: Joaillier des Reines, Vincent Meylan confirmed that the famed French jeweler had no record of the Dutch Sapphire Tiara. Research by Dutch gemologist George Hamel, as reported by jewelry expert Erik Schoonhoven (who has in depth accounts of this backstory here and here), found the tiara is highly likely to have come from Maison van der Stichel in Amsterdam, with later alterations by Van Kempen.

Your #3 tiara meets your #8 tiara, in the U.K. in 1972
ANP Archief

By whatever name you know it, the Dutch Sapphire Tiara has been a staple for Dutch queens for generations. Queen Juliana regularly wore it with a large sapphire necklace that has since been turned into the Dutch Sapphire Necklace Tiara, plus other sapphire jewels from the Dutch royal collection. (There are so many sapphire pieces in the collection and the Dutch royal ladies have used those pieces in so many different combinations throughout the years, I’ve taken to just considering them all part of one enormous assembled parure.)

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Beatrix, 2006

Princess Beatrix also used the tiara regularly during her time as queen, although her hair often covered the lower part of the tiara. This was particularly true in the later years of her reign. If you conceal the lower portion of this one, you conceal the sapphires, and that’s a major change to the tiara’s look. It needed a new wearer to give it a new look.

Willem-Alexander's inauguration, 2013

One of the biggest appearances in the tiara’s 130+ year history came in 2013, when Queen Máxima chose to wear it to King Willem-Alexander’s formal inauguration as king following Beatrix’s abdication. Unlike her mother-in-law, Máxima wore the tiara higher and made sure to keep her hair out of the way, revealing the tiara’s full sapphire impact.

Máxima at the inauguration
NOS

Máxima also had the top line of the tiara altered and lowered for the occasion to create more of a kokoshnik shape (as shown in the first picture in this post) by removing an element above the central sapphire. This change was temporary, and she has since worn it in the taller format.

Combined with that magnificently regal Jan Taminiau blue dress and cape, this was the Dutch Sapphire Tiara shown off in a way it hadn’t been showcased in decades, or maybe ever. It’s no wonder it gained legions of new fans that day.

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Máxima wears the tiara in the taller version in Denmark, 2015

And it will probably gain even more fans as the years go on. Queen Máxima is converting new Dutch Sapphire admirers, and her mission doesn’t seem anywhere near complete.

Did this one make your list? Is Máxima responsible for your love of this tiara, or were you already there? 

Readers' Favorite Tiaras, The Rematch: #4. The Dutch Diamond Bandeau Tiara

The fourth spot in our countdown of your favorite tiaras belongs to a tiara that has fallen from its second place spot last time around and has even fallen down in the rankings between your nominations and your final votes. But at the end of the day, you still can't argue with GIANT DIAMONDS.

The Dutch Diamond Bandeau Tiara

We revisited the history of the Dutch Diamond Bandeau Tiara (often called the Rose Cut Bandeau, though the diamonds are not actually rose cut) earlier this year, so click here to revisit its path from a diamond collet necklace, a wedding gift of Queen Emma's, to one of the most frequently worn Dutch tiaras.

Queen Wilhelmina, Queen Juliana, Queen Máxima
ANP Archief/Thai Monarchy

With so many appearances to pick from - seems like it's been Queen Máxima's favorite tiara over the years; Princess Beatrix is also a fan, and other Dutch royal ladies have taken it for a spin as well - we return to the obvious question: Which Dutch Diamond Bandeau Tiara appearance is the best Dutch Diamond Bandeau Tiara appearance?

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Crown Princess Victoria's wedding, 2010

I have three nominations, and they all go to our fair Máx, because no one pays attention to their jewels quite like she does. Her appearance at Victoria and Daniel's wedding gets a nom not because of the dress - this color is neither here nor there in the saddest way - but because of the jewel combination. What should you wear with your tiara of giant diamond collets? A necklace of even more giant diamond collets, OBVIOUSLY.

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Argentina state banquet, 2017

Anyway, for a nomination on dress power alone, I don't need to go any further back in time than March. Heavenly, this. And an excellent use of a "small" tiara to balance a major necklace.

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State banquet in Belgium, 2006

My final nod goes to this one, which I think is kind of a sleeper contender for Máxima's best ever, in any category. Clean lines on the dress, crisp white gloves, even the sleek sash with no stripes or whatever to fuss it up - that's how you highlight the simple design of the Dutch Diamond Bandeau. So very well played.

Which Bandeau appearance gets your vote for best of the best? Did this tiara make your favorites list?