Platinum Jubilee: How the Queen Picks Her Jewelry for a Jubilee
There aren’t really any set traditions for a Platinum Jubilee because Queen Elizabeth is the first monarch to have one. But over her 70 years on the throne, the queen has established a few jewelry traditions, using priceless pieces from her collection to express her affection for her ancestors. From the first jubilee celebration, honoring the 50th year of George III’s reign back in 1809, the emphasis has been on providing an opportunity for citizens to celebrate the monarch’s longevity and the nation’s stability. For the British, this means parties in the streets, but for the queen, this means she doesn’t deviate too much from her usual pearl necklace and brooch combination. Still, she does use jubilees as an opportunity to inject her day-to-day choices with a bit of added significance, usually through a subtle symbolic theme apparent from her choices.
Sometimes that theme is overt, such as her choice of a brooch made out of the Cullinan III and IV diamonds—spectacular gems she jokingly calls “granny’s chips”—for the service of thanksgiving during her Diamond Jubilee. If that is any guide, as expert Lauren Kiehna recently pointed out, we can expect to see her wear some of her favorite pieces set in platinum, like the flame lily brooch. Sometimes it’s a little more subtle, like her choice throughout the Silver Jubilee to wear pieces that reference her grandmother, Queen Mary, and her husband, George V, whose Silver Jubilee she attended as an infant in 1927.