The Tiara the City of London Gave a Princess — and the Three Brides Who Wore It After

In 1934, an entire city bought a diamond tiara for a princess — and nearly a century later, no one can say for certain where it came from.

This is the story of the Kent City of London Fringe Tiara: a jewel with no birth certificate, given not by a king or inherited from a mother, but presented on newsreel film by the Corporation of the City of London to Princess Marina on her marriage to the Duke of Kent. Its shimmering "Russian fringe" silhouette hints at a lost Imperial past — possibly a Romanov piece, possibly not — and the truth may never be settled.

What we can trace is where it has travelled, and on whose heads it has rested. Marina made it the tiara of her married life — though, curiously, not the one she wore to her own wedding. From there it passed down three generations of a single family and crowned three Kent brides: Princess Alexandra in 1963, Princess Michael of Kent in 1978, and Lady Gabriella Windsor in 2019.

Beauty, mystery, and inheritance — told, as always, through the jewel itself.