Our survey through the fashion and jewelry decades of the late Queen Elizabeth II has arrived in the new millennium, when the Queen took her mother’s favorite heirloom tiara out for a spin during a state visit to Malta.
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh were welcomed to Malta for a state visit in November 2005. For years, the island had been a special place for the royal couple. Philip was stationed there with the navy in the early 1950s, and Elizabeth traveled there to stay with him for several lengthy stretches of time. At the start of Elizabeth’s reign, Malta was a crown colony; by the end, it was a republic with several decades of independent democratic rule. Elizabeth and Philip’s hosts during the 2005 state visit were President Eddie Fenech Adami and his wife, First Lady Mary Fenech Adami.
Philip and Elizabeth both wore gala attire for the black-tie dinner at San Anton Palace in Attard. Philip pinned his medals and his Garter star to his jacket, and he wore the neck badge of the Order of Merit. Elizabeth wore a white evening gown decorated with sequins, but no decorations—and interestingly, in several images you can see the reinforced place on the dress where a chivalric star would ordinarily be fastened to the garment. She wore silver shoes and carried a matching silver bag, and she brought along a fur-trimmed wrap for warmth.
Malta’s national colors are red and white, so naturally the Queen reached for diamond and ruby pieces from her jewelry collection for the dinner. But instead of wearing her usual ruby tiara, the Burmese Ruby Tiara, she surprised everyone by appearing in public for the first time in Queen Victoria’s Indian Circlet.
The tiara, which is part of the crown collection, had remained in the Queen Mother’s jewelry box until her passing in 2002. This dinner turned out to be the only time that Elizabeth would ever wear the circlet for a public event. In fact, we didn’t see it worn in public again until the Princess of Wales brought it out for the German state banquet in December 2025!
Instead of the crown ruby necklace that the Queen Mum usually wore with the circlet, Elizabeth chose to wear the Baring Ruby Necklace. She had purchased the necklace herself in 1964 to add a second major ruby necklace option to her arsenal, as the Greville Ruby Necklace simply didn’t work with lots of dresses.
Elizabeth also added additional ruby and diamond pieces, including diamond and ruby cluster earrings that belonged to her grandmother, Queen Mary. (King George V gave them to her as a birthday present in May 1926.) Her ruby and diamond bracelet, worn on her right wrist, was worn for numerous gala events over the years and featured in Angela Kelly’s Dressing the Queen.
A scheduling reminder: there will be no Wednesday Hidden Gems newsletter for Substack subscribers this week, as I’m not back at my desk yet following my London trip. But never fear: there will be Hidden Gems content coming up on Saturday and a return to normal Wednesday newsletters next week! And I’ll see you back here tomorrow for the conclusion of our Queen Elizabeth II fashion and tiara time machine series.
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