The diamonds were dazzling mightily in Copenhagen tonight as the Danish royal family attended the traditional New Year’s Levee at Amalienborg Palace.
King Frederik X and Queen Mary led the royal family at tonight’s dinner and reception, which was given for members of the government, parliamentary representatives, and other state officials. King Frederik wore full gala uniform with orders and decorations, including the collar of the Order of the Elephant. (January 1st is one of the only “collar” days of the year for members of the order.) Queen Mary wore a champagne-colored Jesper Hovring gown that has been reimagined a few times. The lace bodice and sleeves are reportedly new additions to the piece.
Queen Mary’s tiara is also the result of a little royal reimagining. The rose-cut diamonds set in the bandeau come from the Danish crown jewelry collection.
The gems, which originally belonged to Princess Charlotte Amalie of Denmark (1706-1782), were previously set in a medieval-inspired belt by the goldsmith Carl Martin Weisshaupt in 1840. The diamond belt, with its extender pieces, is shown here in a pre-2024 crown jewel display at Rosenborg Castle with the rest of the rose-cut suite. To the best of my knowledge, the last Danish royal lady to actually wear the belt was Queen Lovisa, who died a century ago.
In 2024, Queen Mary and experts from the Danish Royal Collection commissioned a new bandeau-style tiara setting for the largest diamonds from the belt. The belt setting was retained, with spacers shown in place of the diamonds which now reside in the tiara. (They’re able to be replaced in the belt should anyone desire to do so.) The result was a much more wearable piece of jewelry for our modern times, something very similar to the diamond bandeau owned by the Dutch royal family.
There’s a second suite of diamond jewels in the Danish crown jewel collection. This demi-parure includes a necklace and a large floral corsage ornament, as well as earrings with two different pairs of pendants. The diamonds in this set, which was also made in 1840 by Weisshaupt, belonged to three Danish queens consort: Queen Sophie Magdalene (1700-1770), Queen Juliane Marie (1729-1796), and Queen Caroline Matilda (1751-1775).
For tonight’s New Year’s Levee, Queen Mary wore the earrings from the brilliant set with the large pear-shaped pendants. She also wore a stack of diamond bands on her left hand and her cocktail ring with the bright yellow gemstone centerpiece on her right.
The King and Queen were joined at the reception by their elder son, Crown Prince Christian. He wore white-tie gala attire with the collar of the Order of the Elephant and a slate of royal medals.
Not present for the levee was Christian’s sister, Princess Isabella, who turned eighteen in April. She now has a special tiara and gala decorations of her own, but she was not expected to attend tonight’s event. Isabella is still in school, and conversations about what her future royal role will look like are reportedly still ongoing.
But there were three more spectacular royal tiaras present on other royal ladies from the family. The King’s mother, Queen Margrethe, wore a favorite pink evening gown and a fur jacket with her Order of the Elephant collar and star for the reception.
For the levee, Queen Margrethe chose one of her personal suites of jewelry: the Naasut Tiara and its matching earrings. The jewels were designed by Nicolai Appel, a Greenlandic goldsmith, as a Ruby Jubilee present from the people of Greenland for Margrethe in 2012.
The bright yellow gold that the tiara and earrings are made of actually comes from melted-down coins, all of which were originally made with gold mined from Greenland. The tiara features a delicate array of gold flowers native to Greenland, and appropriately, the word naasut translates roughly to “flower” or “plant” in Kalaallisut, Greenland’s Inuit language.
The floral theme continues through to the earrings, which are also made of Greenlandic gold, and which feature long pendants with floral drops.
The third tiara of the evening arrived on the head of Princess Marie, wife of the King’s brother, Prince Joachim. She wore a favorite blue velvet evening gown with shirtwaist styling on the bodice.
With the blue gown, Marie wore diamonds and sapphires. Her tiara, the Nuits Claires Tiara, was a collaboration between Marie and the French jewelry firm Maison Mauboussin. The white gold tiara features 13 carats of diamonds and 13 carats of sapphires, as well as a vivid pear-shaped Ceylon sapphire center stone, which weighs in at 6.82 carats. The company retains ownership of the jewel, but Marie has the exclusive right to wear the tiara. She also added a diamond necklace with an interesting ribbon design and diamond and sapphire earrings.
She finished off the look with a diamond tennis bracelet on her left wrist. On her left hand, she wore her gold wedding band, and on her right, she added a pearl and diamond ring.
The King’s aunt, Princess Benedikte, was also on hand for the New Year’s reception. She wore a pink and gold evening gown with her Elephant insignia for the occasion, plus her father’s Royal Portrait Order and the badge of the Order of the Dannebrog.
Benedikte accessorized with the Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg Diamond Fringe Tiara, a Koch-made legacy from the family of her late husband, Prince Richard. With the tiara, she wore the necklace and earrings from her suite of amethyst jewels. She’s said to have inherited the amethysts from her mother, Queen Ingrid.
She also wore a diamond ring on her right hand, plus sentimental bracelets on both wrists. The diamond bracelets stacked on her right wrist come from a sautoir that belonged to her grandmother, Queen Alexandrine of Denmark. And the gold bangle on her left wrist is, famously, the bracelet worn by all female descendants of her great-grandmother, Princess Margaret of Connaught.
This post is going up early on Thursday evening, but it serves as our regular Friday morning article. On Saturday morning, be sure to head over to Hidden Gems for the first part of a special new series. (Hint, hint: it involves the royal baby pictured above!) All subscribers should find the article in their email inboxes shortly after midnight in my time zone, and paid subscribers will have access to the full piece. See you all then!
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