Queen Camilla Wears Over $12 Million in Queen Elizabeth’s Sapphires for Glittering State Banquet

She paired the jewels with an ivory Fiona Clare gown.

The Gist

• Queen Camilla wore an impressive suite of sapphire jewels to the French state banquet at Windsor Castle on July 8, alongside her husband King Charles.
• Atop her head, Camilla wore the Belgian Sapphire Tiara, which was also the same tiara she wore for the first time as Queen Consort.
• She paired that tiara with a sapphire necklace and sapphire bracelet, all from a sapphire suite once belonging to Queen Elizabeth.

While Kate Middleton might wear on a regular basis the most famous sapphire in the royal family—her iconic sapphire and diamond engagement ring, which once belonged to Princess Diana—Queen Camilla brought out the jewel with aplomb for the French state banquet on July 8.

While the Princess of Wales wore a pair of Queen Elizabeth’s earrings—the Greville Diamond Chandelier Earrings, created by Cartier, specifically—on Tuesday evening, Camilla, too, wore Queen Elizabeth’s jewelry. Clad in an ivory Fiona Clare gown, the Queen wore the Belgian Sapphire Tiara, which she paired with the late Queen’s sapphire suite.

The sapphire earrings Camilla wore are from Her late Majesty’s personal collection, according to The Court Jeweller, and on Tuesday Camilla also wore a sapphire bracelet and a sapphire necklace given to then-Princess Elizabeth by her father, King George VI. Continuing the sapphire theme, Camilla wore atop her head the Belgian Sapphire Tiara, which Stone pointed out was the first tiara she wore at King Charles’s first state banquet as monarch (and her first as Queen).

According to Maxwell Stone of U.K. jeweler Steven Stone, the tiara was refashioned from a 19th century necklace once owned by Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; its estimated value is $6.7 million. The sapphire and diamond cluster line necklace, with an estimated value of $5.4 million, was a gift to Princess Elizabeth from her father on her wedding day in 1947 and originally featured 18 sapphires before the Queen redesigned it in 1952, removing four of the sapphire clusters from the back and resetting one of the larger stones from the front to create a pendant for the necklace, according to Stone. He called this particular piece “one of the late monarch’s most cherished jewels.”

The sapphire earrings, valued at approximately $407,000, are made up of two round-cut sapphires, each encircled by diamonds, Stone said.

Ahead of yesterday’s kickoff to the French state visit—which lasts until July 10—Charles and Camilla visited France’s President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron in Paris in September 2023, the first state visit abroad of Charles’s reign, following his coronation four months prior. For a state banquet similar to the one held last night at Windsor Castle, Camilla skipped wearing a tiara for the state banquet in her and the King’s honor at the Palace of Versailles, though she did accessorize her navy Dior gown with—you guessed it—the necklace and bracelet from the King George VI Sapphire Suite, according to People.