At the close of a long weekend of Coronation celebrations, Buckingham Palace shared three official portraits of King Charles, Queen Camilla, and working members of the royal family, including Kate Middleton. King Charles III is wearing the full regalia from the Westminster Abbey ceremony, but the portrait gave the public its first glimpse of the ivory Alexander McQueen gown the Princess of Wales wore beneath her formal robes—as well as her chosen jewelry.
Kate’s dress is adorned with embroidery featuring rose, thistle, daffodil and shamrock motifs, to represent the four nations of the United Kingdom (the same flowers appeared on her wedding dress in 2011). The image also shows how the princess honored the late Queen Elizabeth II on the day by wearing her George VI Festoon Necklace, which was commissioned in 1950 by King George VI for the then Princess Elizabeth. The king asked royal jewelers Garrard to turn 105 loose diamonds from the Royal Collection into a special necklace for his daughter, made up of three tiered strands of diamonds of different sizes.The gift from her father, who died when she was just 25, was one of the Queen’s favorite pieces of jewelry.
