July is the month for celebrating the remarkable ruby, and I’ve decided to declare this the official Ruby Tiara Celebration Week of the summer here at TCJ. We’ll be looking at some fabulous recent ruby tiara appearances from the past few years over the next five days, starting off with a closer look at a moment from just a few weeks ago: the Princess of Orange wearing Queen Emma’s rubies during the Japanese state visit to the Netherlands.
On June 17, an impressive array of Dutch royal family members came to the Royal Palace in Amsterdam to help host a grand state banquet for the Emperor and Empress of Japan. The King and Queen were joined by two of their daughters, Princess Amalia and Princess Ariane, as well as his mother, Princess Beatrix; his sister-in-law, Princess Laurentien; and his aunt and uncle, Princess Margriet and Pieter van Vollenhoven. You can read all about every piece of jewelry worn by the entire contingent in my article from June.
Both Amalia and Ariane opted for red gowns for the occasion. Amalia’s dress is a new version of a gown that we’ve seen before. For this banquet, she had the gown that she wore for the Jordanian royal wedding banquet altered to create a flattering sweetheart neckline. With the gown, she wore new decorations presented to her by the Emperor: the sash and star of the Order of the Chrysanthemum.
The jewels that she wore for the banquet, though, were far from new. Amalia has already proved herself to be an enthusiastic wearer of heirloom jewels from the Dutch royal vaults, and on this occasion, she reached for a diamond and ruby parure made for her great-great-great-grandmother, Queen Emma. The set, made by Mellerio, was Queen Emma’s Christmas gift from her husband, King Willem III, in 1888.
Amalia wore five parts of the grand set during the banquet: the tiara, the cluster earrings, the necklace, the bracelet, and the cluster ring. The tiara, necklace, and bracelet share the same design: diamond and ruby flower and scroll designs set between swags of diamonds. The earrings and ring echo the central diamond and ruby cluster in each of those larger pieces.
Amalia has worn the tiara and other jewels from the Mellerio parure before. She memorably chose the tiara, earrings, brooch, and bracelet for the Omani state banquet back in April 2025. And, of course, she technically made her debut in the tiara way back in October 2012, when she tried it on before her mother took it to Luxembourg for the big royal wedding celebrations that month.
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