Queen Camilla Turned Princess Diana’s 4-Carat Diamond Wedding Gift Into a $133,000 Brooch

The piece was originally a necklace.

To know Queen Camilla’s style is to know that she is masterful at the art of brooches. Her collection is deep—and one of them apparently came from an heirloom wedding present once given to Princess Diana when she married Prince Charles on July 29, 1981.

Camilla, of course, is now married to King Charles; the couple celebrated 20 years of marriage last April. Per Brides, Camilla took the piece once owned by Diana—made up of emeralds and diamonds—and turned it into a $133,000 brooch.

Before it was a brooch, though, it was a necklace that was originally part of Queen Alexandra’s 1863 collection. When Diana married Charles, the Queen Mother—Queen Elizabeth’s mother and Charles’s beloved grandmother—gave it to the 20-year-old bride as a wedding gift. In addition to the redesigned brooch being worn by Camilla, it has also been worn by Kate Middleton.

Diana wore the piece as a necklace in 1986 while at a gala at the Vienna Burgh Theatre in Austria, which she paired with a long-sleeve sequined dress. She also, per Brides, wore the necklace on a visit to Toronto, where she and Charles attended a dinner together at The Royal York Hotel. When Diana died as a result of a Paris car accident on August 31, 1997, the necklace became a part of the Royal Collection; afterwards, Camilla—who married into the royal family on April 9, 2005—had the piece made into a brooch.

In 2019, she wore the brooch to celebrate Charles’s 50th anniversary as the Prince of Wales, which she paired with a green jacket and a string of pearl necklaces. Kate wore the brooch three years later on November 22, 2022 for a state visit by the president of South Africa.

“This remarkable brooch features approximately four carats of white diamonds, arranged in 18 individual stones, and is crowned by a breathtaking 3-carat cabochon-cut green emerald pendant,” according to Maxwell Stone of the U.K. jeweler Steven Stone.

“Once worn as a necklace by Princess Diana, the piece carries not only aesthetic brilliance, but deep royal significance,” he added.

Queen Camilla wearing the brooch on March 5, 2019.Getty

The piece—worn in different ways by both of Charles’s wives—also carries a hidden nod to the former Prince of Wales. It has three diamond-encrusted ostrich feathers, which doubles as the emblem of the Prince of Wales. Charles’s son Prince William now carries that title, which makes sense why Kate chose to add it to her jewelry rotation, as well.

In Stone’s estimation, “The transformation of the necklace into a brooch likely has minimal impact on its value—especially if the redesign was recent and expertly executed.” That said, he added that it might be worth even more than its $133,000 value “had it remained in its original necklace form.”