The Necklace Nobody Can Identify: What the Royals Wore to the Oman State Banquet!

The necklace nobody can identify. What the royals wore to the Oman state banquet. This month, Windsor Castle welcomed a Sultan of Oman on a state visit for the first time in 44 years. By nightfall, the royal ladies had turned St George's Hall into a masterclass in jewels. Tonight we have three questions for you. Why did Queen Camilla wear a necklace that even the experts can't identify? Which tiara was the only one of the evening to carry a coloured gemstone? And what was the quiet colour code hiding in the daytime outfits? Stay to the end, because the star I'm promising you doesn't appear until the very last chapter. Chapter 1. The Daytime Code The welcome ceremony at Windsor was a wet one, but nobody's outfit looked dampened. Look at the colours! Oman's flag is red, white and green, and the two royal ladies on the dais each took one of those colours and made it theirs. Queen Camilla wore a red coat and hat. Pinned to the coat was the first clue of the day, a diamond and ruby floral clip brooch from the Queen Mother's collection. It's one of a pair that the Queen Mother commissioned from Cartier in the 1940s. She wore them together, and she wore them singly, and one appeared at her shoulder at her 80th birthday celebration in 1980. The late Queen inherited them in 2002 and wore them occasionally, once to the Westminster Abbey service for her diamond wedding anniversary. And here's the detail we love. This may be the first time we've seen Camilla wear it. Ruby is her birthstone, and a red coat for Oman gave her the perfect excuse. The Princess of Wales answered in green. She chose a dark green Alexander McQueen coat dress with a matching hat, and her earrings carried the theme too. They were new, from Cassandra Goad, in yellow gold set with green chrome diopside and diamonds. But the jewel to watch was on her coat. Queen Alexandra's Three Feathers Brooch. It was given to Alexandra in 1863 by a committee of women, the Ladies of North Wales, and made by Garrard. It carries the Prince of Wales's feathers and the gold in it was mined in Merionethshire in Wales. Diana wore it, often as a pendant. Camilla wore it a few times. Since 2022, it has been Princess Catherine's alone, a badge of her role. Colour as diplomacy, jewels as signature. That was the morning. Some jewel watchers had hoped Princess Catherine might go a step further and wear the sapphire suite Diana was given by a Sultan of Oman. She didn't. But the evening had other surprises. Chapter 2. The Princess of Wales. At the banquet, Princess Catherine was seated beside the Sultan himself. She arrived in a butter-yellow Elisabetta gown with cape detail, worn with the sash and star of the Royal Victorian Order and the King's Royal Family Order. Against the red and gold of St George's Hall, it glowed. On her head, Queen Mary's lover's knot tiara. Let's remind ourselves of the story, because it's a good one. In 1913, Queen Mary admired the Cambridge Lover's Knot tiara that had stayed in her family's line. She couldn't have it, so she did the next best thing and commissioned Garrard to make her a copy. Mary never could resist a jewel she admired. The tiara passed to Queen Elizabeth II, who lent it to a young Diana in 1981. It became one of the most photographed headpieces in the world. After Diana's death, it sat out of view for years, until Princess Catherine brought it back in December 2015. In the decades since, it has become her go-to. Her earrings were the Greville chandelier earrings, Cartier diamonds that belonged to the society hostess Margaret Greville, who left her jewels to the Queen Mother in 1942. They later went to Queen Elizabeth II, and Princess Catherine has worn them since last November. She also wore a diamond bracelet that belonged to Queen Mary, a piece once worn as a choker. To secure her sash, she used a small Art Deco-style diamond brooch by Bentley and Skinner from her own collection. Here's the pattern. Much of what Princess Catherine wears is inherited, and a good deal of it belonged to the late queens. That's a deliberate message. She is wearing the continuity of the monarchy. Now, the debate. Every state banquet, the comment sections fill up with one question. Why always the lover's knot? The case for it is strong. A future queen consort benefits from a signature jewel, instantly recognisable, and the tiara links her to Mary, Elizabeth and Diana in one glance. So tell us in the comments. Should she keep the lover's knot, or is it time for another? And which tiara do you want next? Right, that's the future queen consort. Now for the host. Chapter 3. Queen Camilla and the Mystery Necklace Camilla arrived in royal blue with ruffled sleeve cuffs. She wore the king's royal family order, plus the sash of an Omani order presented to her by the sultan earlier that same day, worn with the star of the Order of the Garter. And look at what held that sash in place. Queen Victoria's diamond bar brooch. It's a small jewel, easy to miss next to a tiara, but it's another piece with a royal pedigree stretching back to the 19th century. Her tiara was the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, a wedding gift to Queen Mary in 1893. It's now 133 years old. Queen Mary gave it to Princess Elizabeth for her wedding in 1947, and for decades it was one of the late Queen's most recognisable jewels. Camilla has worn it before, including at a diplomatic reception in 2023 and at December's German state banquet, and it clearly suits her. But here's the detail that makes this choice feel like more than a favourite. In February 1979, during her tour of the Gulf, Queen Elizabeth visited Oman. After the Sultan hosted her at a state dinner, she returned the hospitality with a dinner on the Royal Yacht Britannia docked in Muscat. And the tiara she wore that night was this one. Camilla wears it often enough that we can't say for certain it was deliberate, and the palace hasn't said, but it's a lovely echo of an earlier chapter in Britain's friendship with Oman. Her earrings go back much further. They are the Kent Amethyst earrings, which belonged to Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent. That makes them some of the oldest jewels in the Royal Collection. Then there is the necklace, and this is our mystery. Swags of small pearls hang between clusters of diamonds and amethysts. It matches the earrings beautifully. But royal jewellery specialists say they have never seen this piece before. The palace hasn't identified it. Is it a Victorian piece pulled from the vaults? Is it a new commission? Is it a gift? Right now, nobody outside the palace can say. If you have a theory, the comments are open. Round her wrists, Camilla wore two of the Queen Mother's Cartier Art Deco bracelets. On the left, an all-diamond one. On the right, the sapphire and diamond one, picking up the blue of her gown. The full set has five, and in the 1920s, they could even be mounted on a frame and worn together across the forehead as a bandeau. The Queen Mother stacked all five. Camilla chose a more restrained two. Take the whole picture in. a Queen Mary tiara, a Queen Victoria-era earring, a Queen Mother bracelet, and one jewel nobody can name. That's the Queen's approach in miniature. Old, familiar, and quietly personal, with one surprise. Chapter 4. The Princess Royal. Now to the royal who has never needed anyone's approval. Princess Anne wore a golden gown with intricate embellishment at the sleeves and neckline, the garter sash and star, and the royal family orders of both her mother and her brother. Her tiara was the Meander Bandeau, sometimes called the Greek Key. It belonged to her paternal grandmother, Princess Andrew of Greece, born Princess Alice of Battenberg. So when Anne wears this tiara, she's wearing her grandmother's story as well as her jewels. It's a simple, restrained bandeau, but it carries a lot of history. She added a pearl and diamond necklace with matching earrings and used a gold flower brooch to secure her sash. Which brings us to a small debate. Her golden pearl pieces might be gifts from Oman. As of now, it's unconfirmed. If those were Omani gifts, it would be exactly the kind of diplomatic gesture that suits her. No fuss, no announcement, just a quiet tribute. That is Anne. No speeches about it. She wears what she wants, and she wears it for years. Chapter 5. The Duchess of Gloucester. The payoff. We promised you a star. Here she is. Birgitta, Duchess of Gloucester, arrived in one of her favourite cream evening gowns, with the Garter sash and star and the royal family orders of King Charles III and Queen Elizabeth II. And on her head, among all four tiaras of the night, hers was the only one with a colour. That's the answer to my second question. Queen Camilla's tiara was diamonds. The Princess of Wales's was diamonds and pearls. Princess Anne's was a diamond Greek key bandeau. The Duchess wore Queen Mary's honeysuckle tiara with a pink centrepiece, pink topaz or kunzite. And here's the clever part. That centre is interchangeable. It can be swapped for other stones, so one tiara becomes several. The Duchess has worn it in different forms over the years, and tonight she chose pink. She didn't stop there. She wore a matching pink topaz necklace and bracelet, so the colour was a suite, not an accident. She added more diamond bracelets on her left wrist. And then she did the thing she's famous for. She pinned three of her diamond flower brooches down the front of her gown as buttons. It looked as though the dress had been designed that way. That's why connoisseurs love her. She owns one of the most significant private jewel collections in the family, and she uses it with imagination and real joy. In a room of inherited, formal choices, hers were the ones that looked chosen. So what did we see this evening? Princess Catherine wore continuity. Camilla wore tradition, with one genuine mystery. Anne wore her own history, plainly and proudly. And the Duchess of Gloucester wore colour, the one thing nobody else dared. And let's not forget the daytime code. Red for the Queen, green for the Princess, a nod to Oman's flag. In royal life, jewels aren't decoration, they're a way of speaking when the words are already scripted. Now let us know if anyone identifies Camilla's amethyst and pearl necklace? Do you want Princess Catherine in the lover's knot again, or in something new? And which ladies would you vote as star of the night? Let us know in the comments section, but before you do, not forget to like and subscribe to to our channel for more Royal State Occasions.