Princess Madeleine of Sweden gave the perfect royal Christmas look as the festive season got into full swing.
The princess joined her parents, King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia, and her older sister, Crown Princess Victoria, at the Royal Palace in Stockholm for a gala dinner for this year’s Nobel Prize winners.
Madeleine, 43, wore a striking evening gown with a black, sleeveless top and a shimmering full length skirt completely covered in sequins.
To top it all, she chose one of the most unusual of all royal tiaras – a diadem made of cut steel.
The Swedish royals have two diadems made of this highly polished metal and Madeleine wore the larger of the pair. The sparkle on both comes from the way the steel is cut and polished, hence the name of the tiara. It’s believed that this technique was developed in the late 18th century as a cost cutting measure. It also produces tiaras that are much lighter to wear.
The tiara first belonged to Queen Hortense of Holland who was a granddaughter of the Empress Josephine, first wife of Napoleon. It ended up with Hortense’s niece, named Josephine after the tragic Empress. This Josephine would become Queen of Sweden and brought the tiara with her to her new country. However, it fell out of royal favour and ended up hidden away in the Swedish royal palace vaults.
It was Madeleine’s mother, Queen Silvia, who gave it a new lease of life. On her marriage to King Carl XVI Gustaf, in 1976, she began going through the royal resources and found several outstanding pieces of jewellery that had been forgotten. Among them was the tiara that Madeleine wore with gold sequins to this latest Nobel gathering.
The Cut Steel tiara is a popular choice among Sweden’s royals who have a habit of sharing round their tiaras. This diadem, with its striking shape representing feathers, has become particularly symbolic of the royal family.
Earlier this year, Queen Silvia chose it for a surprise TV appearance in which she paid tribute to one of Sweden’s best loved entertainers, Christer Lindarw, who has worn a replica of the diadem when doing his celebrated drag tribute to the Swedish consort.
Princess Madeleine’s decision to match it to a gold sequinned dress provided the stand out look of a glittering evening and was in contrast to the matching outfits worn by her mother and sister.
Crown Princess Victoria wore a striking bright pink dress with cape effect and an all diamond tiara with a link to another popular royal.
Her diadem is known as the Connaught Tiara and it came to Sweden with Princess Margaret of Connaught, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria who married into the Swedish royal family in 1905. She became Crown Princess in 1907 when her husband, Gustaf Adolf, became heir to the throne but died in 1920 while expecting her sixth child, who did not survive.
The tiara is forever linked with her. It features pretty loops of diamonds shaped as floral garlands with diamonds hanging inside them. It’s another popular diadem for pass the parcel as Princess Madeleine wore it to the Nobel prize ceremony last year.
Queen Silvia’s colour choice for the latest tiara night out matched that of her eldest daughter. The Swedish queen chose an unusual dusky pink evening gown with a wrap around effect on the shoulders which she paired with historic amethysts that have been a well used pick among her family for decades.
The tiara features huge amethysts surrounded by diamonds and it’s another piece that has its present place in the royal jewellery box because of Silvia.
When she became Queen of Sweden, Silvia decided to make these gems into a tiara. They had previously been a necklace and part of a set that came to Sweden with the same Queen Josephine who brought the Steel Cut tiaras with her. The Empress Josephine is also involved. She is said to have given the amethysts to her daughter-in-law, Augusta of Leuchtenberg, who passed them to the daughter she named in honour of Josephine.
The pink and purple combination certainly made for a colourful appearance but it was Princess Madeleine, in gold, who pulled the real festive look at this royal event.
