When a Danish princess turns eighteen, she’s given a tiara to wear for gala occasions with the royal family. This year, Queen Margrethe delighted us with her gift for her granddaughter. The seventh spot on my countdown of the best royal jewels of the year goes to Princess Isabella’s debut in the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau.
On April 21, Princess Isabella, the elder daughter of the King and Queen of Denmark, celebrated her eighteenth birthday. To mark the occasion, the Danish royal court released a new set of gala portraits of the princess. In the pictures, she wears a vibrant orange ballgown with the pale blue sash of the Order of the Elephant and coordinating pale blue jewels, including a tiara of turquoise and diamond daisies.
Like the ruby tiara we discussed this morning, the Turquoise Daisy Bandeau is a legacy from Princess Margaret of Connaught, whose nickname was Daisy. The press release from the court noted: “The tiara is made of gold and adorned with 11 rosettes of daisy-like flowers of decreasing sizes, made of turquoise and diamonds,” adding that the jewel was made in the “late nineteenth century.” Per the court, the tiara is also a convertible piece: “Like many other pieces of the royal house’s jewelry, the tiara has multiple functions, as it can be disassembled and used as a bracelet.”
Margaret’s daughter, Princess Ingrid, received the tiara as a confirmation gift after her mother’s death. She wears the tiara above in her own eighteenth-birthday court portrait, taken in 1928. Seven years later, Ingrid married the future King Frederik IX of Denmark, and the tiara moved permanently with her to Copenhagen.
The tiara passed to Ingrid’s daughter, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, in 2000. She liked to wear the bandeau with other turquoise jewels from Margaret of Connaught’s collection, including some pieces said to have belonged to another famous ancestor, Catherine the Great.
Now, the tiara belongs to Isabella. For the portraits, she also wore heirloom turquoise and diamond earrings, borrowed from their current owner, Queen Mary of Denmark. I had to toot my own horn a little bit when these pictures came out. Three weeks earlier, I predicted that the turquoise tiara would be given to Isabella as a birthday present, and I was very happy that I was right!
The sixth spot on my countdown of the best jewels of the year will be revealed tomorrow morning, and it’s a very sparkly one! Stay tuned!
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