Royal jewel lovers, we’ve got a bounty of sparkle to enjoy this evening! The Emperor and Empress of Japan were hosted for a state banquet by King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace, and two spectacular tiara debuts took place during the dinner.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla hosted a state banquet at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday evening in honor of their visiting guests, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan. Several other members of the royal family, including the Prince of Wales, the Duke and duch*ess of Edinburgh, and the Duke and duch*ess of Gloucester were also on hand for the white-tie dinner.
As he arrived for the banquet, the Emperor made his first public appearance in the insignia of the Order of the Garter, which King Charles III bestowed on him during the exchange of official gifts earlier in the afternoon. Queen Camilla also wore the Garter insignia for the banquet, while King Charles wore Japan’s Order of the Chrysanthemum and Empress Masako wore Japan’s Order of the Precious Crown.
There was also another new decoration featured at the banquet: the debut of King Charles III’s Royal Family Order. So far, Queen Camilla is the only wearer of the ribbon and badge. The portrait of the King was painted by Elizabeth Meek, based on a photograph taken last year by Hugo Burnand. The miniature was painted on a synthetic plastic material called polymin instead of ivory.
The miniature is ringed with diamonds–10.41 carats in total, all existing stones sourced from the Royal Collection–and suspended from a pale blue silk ribbon. Press materials from Buckingham Palace note that the ribbon was made by Philip Treacy, and the color was personally selected by Charles, with a nod to the color of the ribbon used by his great-grandfather, King George V. Royal reporters suggested that, over time, we should expect to see more RFO ribbons from the King worn by other ladies of the royal family as well. They implied that the fact that other ladies from the family didn’t wear the RFO tonight is related to the time it takes to make each handcrafted piece rather than to any sort of hierarchy in family affection.
Both Queen Camilla and Empress Masako wore elegant light-colored evening gowns for the banquet. Masako’s lace gown featured glittering embellishments that emphasized the pattern of the lace. Camilla’s gown, per Buckingham Palace, is “a cream silk crepe embroidered dress” made by one of her favorite designers, Fiona Clare.
Along with her gleaming evening gown, Empress Masako treated us to another spectacular sparkling moment, making her first appearance in the Imperial Chrysanthemum Tiara.
The low-profile diamond tiara, which features one of Japan’s most important floral symbols, has been treasured by generations of the Japanese imperial family. Here, Emperor Naruhito’s grandmother, Empress Nagako, wears the tiara during the wedding of his parents, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, in April 1959.
During the last Japanese state visit to Britain, Empress Michiko wore the tiara on a pair of occasions. First, she wore it for the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.
And then, on the second evening of the visit, she wore the chrysanthemum tiara for a banquet at the Guildhall in the City of London.
For the state banquet on Tuesday evening, Empress Masako paired the tiara with diamond earrings, a double-stranded diamond necklace, and a diamond bracelet.
Rows of diamonds were also part of Queen Camilla’s jewelry ensemble for the evening. She wore a three-stranded diamond necklace with the Burmese Ruby Tiara, a diadem personally commissioned by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
In the early 1970s, lacking a ruby tiara in her collection, Elizabeth II commissioned one from Garrard. They used a cache of 96 rubies, a wedding gift from the people of Burma, as well as diamonds from the dismantled Nizam of Hyderabad Tiara to create the new sparkler.
The late Queen wore the tiara often over the next several decades. Her final appearance in the ruby and diamond tiara took place in June 2019 at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honor of the visiting President of the United States.
Queen Camilla first wore the ruby and diamond tiara in public in November 2023 during a state banquet at Buckingham Palace given in honor of the President of South Korea. She paired it with the Crown Ruby Necklace and ruby and diamond earrings from her personal collection.
This time around, Queen Camilla wore the same ruby and diamond tiara and earrings with a diamond bracelet and a spectacular diamond necklace from the royal vaults.
The Diamond Festoon Necklace was commissioned in 1950 by Queen Elizabeth II’s father, King George VI, using diamonds that had been earmarked as Heirlooms of the Crown by his mother, Queen Mary. The necklace was worn by his wife, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), but it became much more strongly associated with his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. She wore the necklace at gala events throughout her 70-year reign.
One particularly memorable outing for the necklace took place in May 2007, when the late Queen paired it with , as well as diamond earrings and the Lover’s Knot Brooch that belonged to Queen Mary, for a state dinner at the White House in Washington, D.C.
We saw the Diamond Festoon Necklace most recently on the Princess of Wales, who wore it for the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla in May 2023.
The Princess of Wales wasn’t in attendance at the state banquet due to her ongoing cancer treatment, and the Princess Royal, who suffered an equine-related concussion earlier this week, wasn’t there either. The next most senior royal lady on the guest list was the duch*ess of Edinburgh, who wore the insignia of the Royal Victorian Order with a green evening gown from a favorite brand, Suzannah.
Sophie was also dazzling in diamonds for the banquet, all pieces on loan from the royal vaults. She wore the Lotus Flower Tiara with the late Queen’s Pear-Shaped Diamond Drop Demi-Parure for the banquet. Significantly, the palace briefed that the jewels were loaned to Sophie “by Queen Camilla,” suggesting that the new Queen (like many consorts before her) is now in charge of the jewelry collection herself.
The Lotus Flower Tiara was made in 1923 for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. She had the tiara made by repurposing a meander and festoon necklace given to her as a wedding present by her husband, King George VI, just a few months earlier. She wears the tiara in an early portrait above.
Later, the tiara was worn often by Elizabeth’s younger daughter, Princess Margaret. It was also worn as a bridal tiara by Margaret’s daughter-in-law, Serena Stanhope, at the start of her marriage to the then-Viscount Linley.
We’ve seen the tiara most recently on the Princess of Wales, who has worn the jewel on a handful of occasions since her royal marriage in 2011. Above, Kate wears the tiara for the Diplomatic Reception in December 2022.
Sophie wore the Lotus Flower Tiara with a suite of jewelry that she has worn in the past. The demi-parure of diamond jewelry, featuring small pear-shaped diamond drops, arrived in the late Queen Elizabeth II’s collection in the 1980s. It’s speculated that the set may have been a gift from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, perhaps presented to Elizabeth II during his state visit to Britain in 1987. She wore the diamonds for the first time in public during the visit’s return banquet.
Over the years, pieces from the suite have been loaned to both the Princess of Wales and the duch*ess of Edinburgh. Above, Sophie wears the necklace and earrings from the set with her redesigned wedding tiara during the American state banquet in June 2019.
There was one more dazzling royal lady in attendance at the banquet: the duch*ess of Gloucester, who was resplendent in diamonds, pearls, and sapphires from her personal collection. She wore the magnificent Cartier Indian Tiara with diamonds and pearls that belonged to her late mother-in-law, Princess Alice, duch*ess of Gloucester. I particularly like how she’s used her diamond floral brooches as “buttons” on her outfit.
The tiara is perhaps the crown jewel of the Gloucester collection. Made by Henri Lavabre for Cartier in the early years of the twentieth-century, the Art Deco jewel was inspired by traditional Indian design motifs. Diamonds, sapphires, and pearls are expertly crowded into the piece’s frame. It was previously owned by Princess Marie Louise, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who wore it often for royal events, including the 1953 coronation. When she died, she bequeathed the jewel to her godson, the present Duke of Gloucester, and it’s been worn by his wife, Birgitte, for gala occasions in the decades since.
But Birgitte, being the particularly wonderful jewelry wearer that she is, didn’t stop there. She also added two more little jewels to the back of her outfit: a pair of diamond clips that also belonged to Princess Alice.
The clips, delightfully, come from yet another Gloucester tiara: the diamond bandeau that Prince Henry gave to Princess Alice as one of her wedding presents in 1935. The tiara can also be worn in an emerald-and-diamond setting. We saw Birgitte sparkling in that version of the piece at the South Korean state banquet last November.
I’ll see you all back here tomorrow with jewels from the Guildhall banquet! We’re expecting to see the Duke and duch*ess of Edinburgh attending the event with the Emperor and Empress.
[UPDATE: No Empress Masako (not a surprise) and no Sophie Edinburgh (a big surprise!) at the Guildhall banquet, so I’ll see you all back here on Thursday morning for more sparkling jewels.]
