Today, the Princess Royal celebrates her 75th birthday. The King’s younger sister has been a fixture at royal engagements since the 1960s, wearing spectacular tiaras and jewels. Among her favorite pieces are these classic diamond jewels, which include several sentimental family gifts.
Princess Anne has worn this married parure of diamond jewelry for gala events for decades, including a notable appearance in the summer of 2017 during the Spanish state visit. She wore the jewels with a slate gray gown embroidered with floral designs and sparkling accents as she accompanied King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia to a banquet at the Guildhall.
Anne also wore the bright kingfisher blue sash of the Order of the Garter with the ensemble, plus two stars: the Garter star and the star of Spain’s Order of Isabella the Catholic, which she received during this visit. (Queen Letizia also looked exceptionally elegant during this Guildhall banquet, and you can read more about her jewels here!)
Princess Anne added even more sparkle to her ensemble with her suite of jewelry: tiara, earrings, necklace and brooch. The tiara has been part of her personal jewelry collection since the spring of 1973. That May, she received the classic diamond festoon tiara as a present from the Hong Kong-based World-Wide Shipping Group after she christened one of their new tankers, the World Unicorn. Anne has worn the tiara regularly during the subsequent half century.
The tiara was a beautiful fit with a suite of jewelry that Anne already owned. In August 1968, her parents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, gave her a classic diamond necklace with ribbon and festoon designs as an eighteenth-birthday present. The gift also included a coordinating pair of diamond earrings.
The romantic married parure of diamond jewelry was completed in November 1973, when her elder brother, Charles, gave her a gorgeous diamond ribbon brooch. The piece features delicate diamond-set tassels at the end of the trailing ribbon sections. Although each part of the married set is distinctive, they all work together remarkably well, so it’s no surprise that Anne has been wearing them together for so many decades.
For the Guildhall dinner, Anne finished off the look with a bangle bracelet on her right wrist and her engagement and wedding rings on her left hand. This photograph gives you a good view of the engagement ring, which features a cabochon sapphire flanked by diamonds.
We recently saw Anne wear the diamond parure again for a gala occasion in July, when she brought out the tiara, necklace, earrings, and brooch for the French state banquet at Windsor Castle. During that event, she posed for a portrait with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence. The image was released earlier this week by Buckingham Palace to celebrate her milestone birthday.
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