Queen Camilla has worn a number of tiaras over the years – from the Belgian Sapphire Tiara to the Aquamarine Ribbon Tiara. But the 2025 Diplomatic Corps reception saw the Queen wear another headpiece from the royal vaults – the Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara.
Let’s take a look at its origins and composition…
Royal watchers will recognise the tiara as the one Princess Eugenie opted to wear on her wedding day in 2018.
Made by French jeweler Boucheron in 1919, the tiara was part of Dame Margaret Greville’s collection. Greville was a British socialite and philanthropist renowned for her impressive jewellery collection and a friend of the Queen Mother’s. It was bequeathed to the Queen Mother upon Margaret’s death in 1942, amongst other jewels, including the Greville chandelier earrings and Greville honeycomb tiara.
Created in the fashionable ‘kokoshnik’ style popularised in the Russian Imperial Court, the piece gets taller at the centre, though the full nature of the tiara with all its stones also resembles something of a bandeau.
The headpiece is comprised of a frame of three horizontal bars of brilliant and rose cut stones pave set in platinum, running on the the top, bottom and middle of the design. These connect at the centre large cabochon emerald at the front, surrounded by a border of diamonds.
Six further emeralds – in a square cut, possibly cushion, or emerald – are positioned on the middle ‘bar’, also with their halo borders. The remainder of the diamonds fill the gaps but shaping of the setting leaves shapely, fan-like gaps, very of the era, that adds some depth to the design.
You’ll notice the attachment is more visible when Camilla wears it, showing how Eugenie had very clever hairstyling to cover this.
Prior to Eugenie wearing the piece, the tiara was hardly seen in public and can only be seen in a few photographs being worn by the late Dame Greville.
