The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

The Ogilvy Tiara

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Our magpie of the month is an elegant, glittering princess, but her personal jewel collection is actually rather small. Today, let’s look at Princess Alexandra’s tiara, a convertibly piece which can be worn with a number of stones.

Alexandra (with Angus and her mother) wearing the tiara, 1963

The tiara was made out of a series of diamond floral hair ornaments that Alexandra wore before her marriage. Around the time that she wed Angus Ogilvy, who was the son of the 12th Earl of Airlie, the floral elements were integrated into the design of this tiara, which also features diamond ribbons trailing around and between the diamond flowers. The piece also has a coordinating necklace, which was patterned after Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee necklace, and coordinating earrings. The parure was a gift from Angus, who had commissioned Collingwood to make the set for his new wife.

Alexandra wears the tiara, 1982

While Alexandra has worn many tiaras during her lifetime — including her mother’s diamond fringe, the Kent Festoon, the Russian pearl tiara, and the bandeau that became the Kent pearl fringe — this tiara is the only one that Alexandra personally owns.

Alexandra wears the tiara, 1993

It’s just as well, then, that the tiara is convertible. The pearls in the sparkler can be switched out for other stones, including sapphires and turquoises. The necklace is also convertible in the same way; its pearls too can be swapped for other gemstones.

Alexandra wears the tiara, 1995

It’s been years since we’ve seen Alexandra in this tiara in public, but that’s largely a function of her advancing age, her slow retirement from royal duties, and her reported physical discomfort wearing jewels like tiaras. It’ll be interesting to see whether Alexandra’s daughter or daughter-in-law, who are both commoners, will ever have a chance to don the family diadem.

The Kent City of London Fringe Tiara

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Our Magpie of the Month for December is one of my very favorite British royal ladies: Princess Alexandra, the Hon. Lady Ogilvy. Alexandra is the daughter of a British royal duke and a Greek princess, and her style reflects her elegant royal roots. Today, let’s marvel a bit at her wedding tiara: the gorgeous diamond fringe that belonged to her mother, Princess Marina.

Marina wearing her mother’s diamond fringe tiara

When Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark
popped across the channel to marry the Duke of Kent in 1934, the
wedding gifts were plentiful — after all, it wasn’t every day that a
British prince married an actual, honest-to-goodness princess. One of
the sparkliest of those presents was the City of London Fringe Tiara.
(Can you guess who was behind the gift? Okay, okay, it was the City of London.)

 Alexandra wearing the City of London Fringe Tiara

Marina didn’t actually wear the tiara on her wedding day. She wore a nearly identical diamond fringe tiara, but it seems that it’s actually most likely the fringe from her mother’s family. Marina’s father was a Greek prince, but her mother was a Russian grand duchess, and she brought a fringe kokoshnik tiara with her from her Romanov relatives. The profile of that tiara is slightly different.However, nearly 30 years later, the City of London tiara got the chance to appear at a royal wedding of its own. Marina loaned the tiara to her daughter, Princess Alexandra (pictured above).

Alexandra married Angus Ogilvy, a younger son of the Earl of Airlie, at Westminster Abbey in 1963. Her appearance at the Abbey in the fringe tiara echoed the bridal attire of her first cousin, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1947.

Princess Michael wears the City of London Fringe Tiara

When Marina died, the tiara stayed with the
Kents; it was inherited by her younger son, Prince Michael. Today, it’s
his wife, Marie-Christine, who wears the sparkler. Although this particular fringe tiara
can’t be worn as a necklace, Princess Michael has played
about with it a bit anyway, adding a velvet backing and topping it with a
diamond necklace to really reinforce the kokoshnik style of the piece.

The Bäumer Aigrette Tiara

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Although much of the Monegasque princely jewels we’re looking at this month are from the collections of Princess Charlotte, Princess Grace, and Princess Caroline, the current Princess of Monaco does have a few pieces of significant jewelry at her disposal. Today, let’s chat about the diamond headpiece she wore to her wedding dinner: the Bäumer Aigrette.

Charlene wearing the tiara during a jeweler’s fitting (source)

The tiara was made by Lorenz Bäumer in 2011 as a wedding present for the princess from her new husband. (An “aigrette” is a headpiece that resembles feathers; sometimes it’s also used to refer to a piece that includes a feather-like spray of gems, like this tiara.) The piece features eleven long, thin stems of diamonds set in white gold with a larger pear-shaped diamond at each tip, forming that characteristic spray that cascades across the wearer’s hair. Some have called this piece the “diamond foam” tiara because of its resemblance to the spray of water droplets that accompany cresting waves.

The water imagery fits Charlene well because she is a swimmer; it also coordinates nicely with Monaco’s role as a maritime principality — and with Charlene’s other sparkler, the Ocean Tiara, too. (Actually, all of the jewelry that Charlene received from her husband on their wedding has a water theme.) The aigrette is a versatile piece; it can also be detached from its frame and worn as a hairpiece or a brooch.

The aigrette has been worn by Charlene in public on precisely one occasion: the reception that followed her wedding to Prince Albert II of Monaco in the summer of 2011. Video footage of Charlene trying on the tiara during its creation process had been released beforehand, and many tiara watchers were surprised that Charlene apparently chose to wear the tiara differently at her wedding than it was intended to be worn.

Rather than wearing the aigrette on its frame, it appears that Charlene chose to detach it and wear it as a separate hair ornament instead. Because she nestled it in her hairstyle rather than arcing it towards her forehead, unfortunately the diamonds seemed to lose some of their impact. Ultimately, though, it’s Charlene’s tiara — perhaps she had very good reasons for choosing to wear it the way she did?

I’ll admit that Charlene’s other tiara doesn’t appear to be the easiest sparkler to wear. But I am rather flabbergasted that she hasn’t chosen this piece to wear at the white-tie events where she’s totally eschewed a tiara, like the wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden. The aigrette looks to be lightweight and would coordinate well with many different gowns — I can only hope that we see her in it again sometime in the future!