December has been a month of terrific tiara moments so far, and today we added to that glittering tally with a quartet of royal tiaras on display for the Nobel Prize presentations in Stockholm.
Every year on December 10th, the Nobel Prizes are presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in a sparkling white-tie ceremony in Stockholm. (The Nobel Peace Prize is presented on the same day in Oslo—more on that tomorrow.) This year, the King and Queen were joined by Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel on the stage during the prize presentations, while Prince Carl Philip, Princess Madeleine, and Christopher O’Neill watched from the front row of the audience. Princess Sofia, who gave birth to Princess Ines in February, was not present for this year’s celebrations.
Queen Silvia gleamed in a golden gown with a bodice covered in red, green, and white crystals. The dress comes from one of her go-to couturiers, Georg et Arend.
If the dress looks familiar, there’s a good reason: Queen Silvia wore the same gown in Stockholm for King Carl XVI Gustaf’s Golden Jubilee banquet in September 2023. On that occasion, she wore diamond jewelry, including the grand Braganza Tiara.
This time around, Silvia paired the dress with diamond and emerald jewelry from the Bernadotte vaults. She wore Queen Sofia’s Tiara, a fascinating nineteenth-century diadem that is packed with symbolism, with the large brooch and earrings from the Bernadotte Emerald Suite. The earrings were recently created to coordinate with the rest of the antique emerald demi-parure. She also secured the back of her Seraphim sash with another diamond brooch.
Like her mother, Crown Princess Victoria pulled a gown from the family’s wardrobe archives for the occasion. But hers has a much longer history: the black-and-white Jacques Zehnder dress has been in Queen Silvia’s collection since the 1990s.
Queen Silvia has worn the dress for several prominent occasions, including a state banquet for King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium in the spring of 1994. She also wore the dress for the Nobel Prize presentations that December, pairing it with Queen Sofia’s Tiara.
Crown Princess Victoria wore the dress with one of her signature jewels: the Baden Fringe Tiara, which has been in the family collection since Victoria of Baden married the future King Gustaf V of Sweden in 1881. The pointed tips of the tiara’s fringes neatly echo the design of the bodice of the gown.
Victoria matched the rest of her jewels to the creamy white color of the gown, wearing antique pearl drop earrings and one of the family’s gorgeous diamond and pearl brooches. She also added a three-row pearl bracelet to her right wrist.
Princess Madeleine was a sparkly dream for the ceremony and banquet, wearing a cool-toned gray evening gown from the British designer Jenny Packham.
Madeleine’s gown gave us a third royal recycling moment for the evening. It’s the same dress that she wore in September 2023 for her father’s Golden Jubilee banquet in Stockholm. For that event, she wore her own Modern Fringe Tiara and the earrings from the family’s Russian Pink Topaz Suite.
For this year’s Nobel festivities, Madeleine wore the dress with the family’s spectacular diamond and aquamarine kokoshnik tiara, a legacy from Princess Margaret of Connaught. She added her own diamond and aquamarine girandole earrings for an extra bejeweled touch and secured her Seraphim sash at her shoulder with a small diamond and aquamarine brooch. On her left wrist, she added Queen Sofia’s Diamond Lattice Bracelet, which she also wore for last year’s Nobels.
The fourth member of the family at this year’s Nobels was a distant cousin: Countess Bettina Bernadotte, who is the president of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Bettina is a granddaughter of Prince Wilhelm of Sweden and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia.
With her silver, black, and pink ensemble, Bettina wore a modern tiara that has been in her personal collection for several years. The piece has a diamond festoon design topped with colorful gemstones in shades of pink, blue, and yellow.
Our bejeweled week continues tomorrow morning with a look at the Nobel Prize jewels from Norway, plus the tiaras of Sweden’s King’s Dinner later in the day. Also: don’t forget to subscribe to Hidden Gems so you’ll get tomorrow’s free bonus newsletter in your inbox!
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