The queen’s pearls live on.
Prince William and Kate Middleton went to Sandringham – Queen Elizabeth II’s private estate – today to greet the public, and the princess paid a moving tribute to her late mother-in-law with her jewellery.
The 40-year-old royal wore a pair of Queen Elizabeth’s famous pearl earrings with a diamond stud as she watched an overwhelming array of floral tributes to Her Majesty, who died on September 8 at the age of 96.
Although they resemble the pearl-button earrings that the late Queen wore almost daily, this style—known as the “Silver Jubilee Pearl Earrings” according to The Court Jeweler—has a larger diamond stud with a teardrop-shaped pearl dangling from it, unlike the larger ones. , round pearl earrings that Queen Elizabeth usually wore.
The earrings were worn during Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, according to Lauren Kiehna of The Court Jeweler, and Middleton borrowed them during a historic trip to the Netherlands in 2016 – her first solo trip abroad.
Along with the meaningful pearls, the Princess of Wales wore a diamond cross pendant and a long black coat — a Catherine Walker custom piece — which she unbuttoned, revealing a black dress with a pleated midi-length skirt.
This wasn’t the first time during the mourning period that we saw the mother of three wearing the Queen’s pearls – she was wearing one of the late monarch’s diamond-and-pearl brooches for yesterday’s procession to the Queen Elizabeth in state, and on Tuesday, she wore a three-strand necklace that may have belonged to Her Majesty.
Other members of the royal family, including the Queen Consort, Princess Anne, Meghan Markle and Zara Tindall, also wore pearl jewelry for the past week, often worn during periods of royal mourning.
“Pearls have long been associated with royalty,” Maxwell Stone of leading British jeweler Steven Stone told Vidak For Congress Style, adding that Princess Anne wore a pair of pearl earrings given to her by her parents in the 1960s to keep her coffin. accompany mother on his journey.
Stone called it an “incredibly heartwarming” choice, saying the studs — known as the Grima Pearl Earrings — possess “an enormous amount of sentimentality” when she wore them to her wedding in 1992 and also to her father’s funeral in 2021.
Queen Elizabeth II will be buried at Westminster Abbey on Monday, September 19.