The right ingredients for a royal success story are crowns, diamonds, ballgowns and shoes, as Cinderella and other fairytale royal characters will agree. Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee celebrations have all of these in plenty as high-end fashion businesses mark the 60 years of the queen’s reign with a range of glittering crowns, ballgowns, jewelled shoes and jewellery.
Harrods, the luxury department store in London owned by Qatari royal family, is celebrating the jubilee with a range of 31 crowns and 13 ballgowns, all displayed in its windows.
The bespoke crowns, based on the template of the queen’s coronation crown, range from the De Beers talisman crown made of 974 diamonds, to a crown designed by Indian high-fashion jewellers Amrapali for Harrods Tea; to an edible one made of cake by Fiona Cairns, who baked the wedding cake for the wedding of Prince William with Kate Middleton last year.
The crowns are complemented by an exhibition and sale of unique ballgowns designed by internationally renowned designers.
“The power of the ballgown is eternal, over the last decade the most successful international designers have discovered a new relevance for red carpet dressing,” Marigay McKee, chief merchant at Harrods says. “The ballgown will always be relevant, as a desirable and aspirational luxury that is here to stay more than ever.”
The ballgowns range from a Roberto Cavalli pastel green gown costing £25,000, to Valentino’s gold, tulle and lace gown reminiscent of an Indian ghagra-choli cut costing £18,000 and a Ralph and Russo gown of £28,800. The ballgowns are exclusive designs and only available in very few sizes.
The crown designed by De Beers Jewellers celebrates fire, life and brilliance through the rich contrasts of the rough and polished diamonds, the famous jewellery house said. “A total of 974 diamonds were used to create the Talisman crown, of which 797 are polished and 177 are rough diamonds. De Beers honours and celebrates the stunningly beautiful 73 carat central diamond by placing it on top of the crown. The lower part of the crown features one 28 carat and one 26 carat rough diamond,” it added.
Harrods, which sources its tea from India, asked Amrapali to create a bespoke crown on behalf of its tea department.
“The crown is made of base metal, but we gold-plated it with 24-carat gold warak (leaf). We used some artificial and some semi-precious stones on the crown, but they were chosen to look like precious stones. We also did some engraving on the crown and decorated it with embellishments,” explains Tarang Arora, international head and design head of Amrapali, who headed the design team that created the crown in India.
The crowns will be on display in the windows till June 15.