Cartier’s Bains de Mer Tiara Sparkles at the V&A in London

Drooling over the preview images from the new Cartier exhibition at the V&A? Today, I’m taking you with me to look closely at one of the fascinating tiaras on display, Princess Grace’s Bains de Mer Tiara.

A few weeks ago, I was one of the lucky people invited to attend a press preview of the new Cartier exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It was an astonishing experience, and I’m excited to share peeks inside with you over the next weeks and months—starting today with a tiara that I had to completely reevaluate after seeing it sparkling in person.

Near the end of the exhibition, a darkened room welcomes visitors with an enormous projection of a famous scene from the movie High Society, showing Grace Kelly’s Tracy Samantha Lord polishing her Cartier diamond engagement ring on a pillow. The ring wasn’t a prop: it was one of two real engagement rings given to Grace by her fiancé, Prince Rainier III of Monaco, in the early weeks of 1956. As viewers walks through this exhibition room, they encounter both the real diamond engagement ring, loaned by Prince Albert II of Monaco, and a tiara that was given to Grace as a wedding present the same year.

The tiara’s design is typical of the midcentury whimsy that was so popular during the 1950s. Three stylized diamond elements, set with both round and baguette-cut stones, perch across the top of the tiara, with a slender diamond band running behind them. In the center of each of the three elements sits a large cabochon ruby. In photographs, especially black-and-white pictures, the rubies often look unimpressive. But in person, they’re absolutely alive. The gleaming rubies and the sparkling diamonds are incredible, and you can see why representatives from the Société des Bains de Mer, one of Monaco’s most important business institutions, thought that the tiara would be a perfect present for their new princess. Red and white are, of course, Monaco’s national colors.

When making the tiara, Cartier understood that a princess needed a piece of jewelry that could be reconfigured and worn in different settings for different kinds of occasions. The jewel could be worn as a traditional tiara, and when removed from its frame, it could also be worn in a necklace setting. Even better, all three of the ruby and diamond sections could be detached, so that each separate piece could be worn as a brooch or a hair ornament.

The new Princess Grace wasted no time in trying out all of the different ways to wear her very first tiara. She made her debut in the full tiara setting of the jewel on April 18, 1956, at a gala held at the Opera House in Monte-Carlo. The gala was held between the couple’s civil and religious wedding ceremonies, but Grace wore the tiara with the full princess gala uniform, including a diamond necklace and bracelet (also wedding presents), a Lanvin gown, and the sash and star of the Order of Saint-Charles, Monaco’s highest chivalric decoration.

Princess Grace wore the full setting of the tiara again a year later for another important engagement: a private audience at the Vatican with Pope Pius XII. She repeated much of the same jewelry worn for the opera gala during her wedding celebrations, adding a pair of earrings and a second bracelet to the mix. Though her daughter-in-law, Princess Charlene, has since exercised the privilege du blanc at the Vatican, Grace opted to wear black for this papal audience.

And here’s a rare glimpse of Princess Grace wearing the tiara in color. This photograph was taken in 1958 in New York, as Grace danced with Prince Rainier during the Imperial Ball. The color photograph allows some of the vibrancy of the tiara’s rubies to peek through, but there’s really nothing like seeing them in person.

During that same New York trip in 1958, Rainier and Grace stopped by Broadway to see the newest Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, which had opened just a few days earlier. They chatted with the musical’s director, the actor and dance Gene Kelly, after the show. For this outing, Grace demonstrated some of the Cartier jewel’s versatility, wearing it in its necklace setting.

A decade later, as Grace grew more inventive with her clothing and styling, she continued to wear the Cartier jewel in various configurations to fit with each look. Here, she wears two of the ornaments as clip brooches on the neckline of her gown as she arrives for her 40th birthday party in November 1969. Today, the jewel belongs to the collection of the Palais Princier in Monaco, and parts of it have been worn by Grace’s elder daughter, Princess Caroline.

Here’s one more photograph that I took of the tiara in the new Cartier exhibition at the V&A. The tiara was just one of many surprises I encountered during my time walking through the rooms of the exhibition. Even pieces that I felt like I had “met” before over years of research and writing greeted me in fresh new ways when I saw them in person. There’s just something about so many of these jewels that photographs and videos can’t really capture. Nevertheless, I’m going to try my best to continue to offer little glimpses inside the museum to those who can’t travel to see the show this year. Stay tuned for much more!