The Girls are back.
Queen Camilla has worn plenty of glittering tiaras since her marriage to King Charles III, but Wednesday night she marked a fashion first by wearing one of Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite pieces, the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara.
Camilla, 76, and the King, 74, attended a special dinner at Mansion House in London to mark the monarch’s first official visit as king to the City of London, which is the capital’s financial district and ancient center.
For the occasion, she repeated a black Bruce Oldfield gown with sparkling silver vine detail, but the star of the show — and source of some social media controversy — was her enormous diamond tiara.
Per the Royal Collection Trust, a committee of young women raised money for the diadem as “a wedding present from the ‘Girls of Great Britain and Ireland’ to the Duchess of York, later Queen Mary, in 1893.”
Queen Mary then gave the sparkling tiara to her granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), when she married Prince Philip in 1947.
The piece was one of Queen Elizabeth’s most-worn tiaras and she even wore it in official photos featured on money in the UK and Commonwealth countries.
Along with the famous headpiece, Camilla wore two other special pieces belonging to her late mother-in-law, the South African Diamond necklace and bracelet.
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The dazzling diamonds were gifted to her by the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa on her 21st birthday visit to the country, per royal jewelry expert Lauren Kiehna of The Court Jeweller.
Kiehna tells Page Six Style that she “was a little surprised to see the tiara again so soon, but it was a happy surprise.”
However, she adds that the response was mixed from her community, sharing, “while many were happy to see the tiara again, others felt that it was a difficult reminder of the beloved late Queen.”
Indeed, some royal fans were thrilled by the jewels — like one who tweeted, “Looking every inch The Queen that she is!” — but other social media users were disappointed and even disgusted to see Camilla wear it so soon after Queen Elizabeth’s death.
“We’ve seen QEII wear it so often for so many years, that I think of it as hers,” one fan commented on The Court Jeweller’s Twitter post, adding “As much as I love it, I’m not ready for someone else to wear it 😢.”
“Just no. It was queen Elizabeth’s signature tiara.too soon,” another added.
“Did she jump in the Queens coffin to snatch them?” a third Twitter user wondered on a post by Couture and Royals.
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This isn’t the first time Camilla has donned one of Queen Elizabeth’s tiaras; she wore the late queen’s Belgian Sapphire Tiara for a November 2022 state banquet along with its matching necklace and bracelet.
Camilla also wore the same show-stopping diamond necklace that the late monarch wore for her own coronation in 1953 when she was crowned alongside her husband on May 6.
At the end of the day, “Charles and Camilla have signaled that continuity is a major theme of his early reign, and paying tribute to the late Elizabeth II by wearing her jewels is part of that thread linking the two eras,” Kiehna tells us.
With plenty of other jewels in the royal vault, we’re eager to see what Camilla will pull out next.
