Kate-Inspired Purchase Review: Catherine Zoraida Double Leaf Earrings

Thought I'd share with you all my opinion on one of the latest items I added to my ever-growing collection of Kate-inspired purcheses: Catherine Zoraida's Double Leaf earrings.

First spotted on the Duchess of Cambrige during the 2012 Diamond Jubilee South Pacific tour, I loved the style of these earrings, although, priced at £140, they were slightly out of my budget. So I postponed buying them, until Catherine wore them again in April on a visit to Uluru, Australia. I fell in love with them all over again and finally gave in and bought them!

Left to right: 13 September 2012, State dinner at the Istana Negara Palace, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 18 September 2012, traditional singing and dancing event in Tuvalu; 18 December 2013, Buckingham Palace Christmas party; 22 April 2014, visit to the National Indigenous Training Academy at Ayers Rock, Australia.

Priced at £140, plus £18 Royal Mail shipping to my home country, Italy (Catherine Zoraida's website offers worldwide shipping, and also an expedited shipping option via FedEx), you cannot say these come very cheap, but after receiving them and having a chance to observe them up close and wear them, I think they're pretty good value for money.

From the designer's website: "Designed and made in England, these delicate leaf earrings are made in 18ct gold plated silver. Featuring beautifully engraved feather details they measure approximately 6cm and have a wonderfully playful feel to them. These timeless gold earrings are an everyday classic. As seen on The Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton)".

Leaf lenght: 3 cm (1.2 in).

They arrived packaged in a rather luxurious black real-leather box, embossed on the lid with the Catherine Zoraida logo:

 

The earrings arrived accompanied by a glossy Catherine Zoraida catalogue. Overall, I was very happy with the level of customer service provided: pieces are handmade to order in the UK, and after placing my order I received straight away an email thanking me for my "lovely order" and advising me the earrings would be ready to ship in 3 business days.

 

I've since worn them many times and I'm really satisfied with my purchase: the earrings have a great shine and you can tell the gold plating is high quality! So, on the whole, a purchase I can definitely recommend!

 

Should you be feeling flush, Catherine Zoraida has the matching Spread Your Wings bracelet (as worn by the Duchess at the Malaysian State dinner) available for £420.

 

Should you, on the other hand, like the style of these earrings but not be inclined to spend quite so much money on them, there are plenty of good repli-kates available on Etsy, among them these by TudorShoppe, or DesignsbyNoa often carries Kate-inspired jewellery and is definitely worth checking out (I have her Temple of Heaven earrings repli-kate and they're excellent quality)! You can read a review of the DesignsbyNoa Double Leaf repli-kates on Tatiana's Delights blog here.

Disclaimer: This post is not endorsed or sponsored in any way by Catherine Zoraida.

The Engagement of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten

On 9 July 1947, the engagement was announced between Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten:

Court Circular announcing the engagement, 9 July 1947.

Their first publicised meeting had been in July 1939 at Dartmouth Royal Naval College, where Philip was studying. By the mid-1940s, media speculation about a romance was well under way and, in February 1947, Prince Philip, a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, renounced his Greek royal title and became a naturalised British subject, adopting the surname Mountbatten from his maternal grandparents.

A series of photographs to commemorate the event were taken at Buckingham Palace:

 

 

 

Princess Elizabeth was presented by her fiancé with a platinum and diamond engagement ring made by London-based jeweller Philip Antrobus Ltd., using a 3-carat brilliant and smaller stones taken from a tiara given by Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg.

 

It was first worn in public by the Princess on 10 July 1947, the day after the announcement of the engagement.

 

Prince Philip subsequently turned again to Philip Antrobus Ltd. to have a matching platinum and diamond bracelet made as a wedding present to Princess Elizabeth:

 

 

 

Below is a portrait of Princess Alice of Battenberg, circa 1920, wearing the tiara dismantled in 1947 to make both the engagement ring and bracelet for Princess Elizabeth:

 



 

Princess Alice's wedding gift to Princess Elizabeth was a diamond tiara in a Greek meander design, given by the Queen to the Princess Royal around 1972 and most recently famously worn by her daughter, Zara Phillips, at her own wedding in 2011:

 

 

The Princess Royal wearing the Greek meander tiara at a Guildhall banquet in April 1988 and Zara Phillip on her wedding day, 30 July 2011.

 

 

Princess Elizabeth wearing the bracelet and engagement ring in a 1947 photo by Mountstuart William Elphinstone.

 

 The happy couple is seen leaving Buckingham Palace after the announcement of their engagement:

 



The Christening of Princess Leonore of Sweden

Today, on her parents' first wedding anniversary (you can read my post on the wedding here), Sweden's Princess Leonore, the daughter of Princess Madeleine and Chris O'Neill, was christened  in the palace chapel of Drottningholm, Stockholm.

Princess Leonore's cousin, Princess Estelle, was christened a little over two years ago, on 22 May 2012 at the Royal Chapel in Stockholm.

 

Princess Estelle's christening.

 

 

Princess Madeleine attending her niece's christening.

 

For today's ceremony, Princess Madeleine choose a powder pink lace dress and veiled hat:

 

 

 

 

The Archbishop of Stockholm, Anders Wejryd, officiated.

 

 

The adorable little Princess was kept calm during the ceremony with a pacifier (photo via Daily News about Crown Princess Mary of Denmark on Facebook).

 

 

I adore the miniature Order of the Seraphim the Princess is wearing on her christening gown! (via Prince Carl Philip of Sweden - Fans & Friends on Facebook).

 

 

 

Princess Estelle was also present:

 



 

After the ceremony, the family posed for photographs outside the chapel:

 

 

 

 

 

Official photographs with the proud parents:

 

 

And grandparents:

 





70th Anniversary of the D-Day Landing: The Queen's Looks

During the past three days a number of world leaders gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing, which took place on 6 June 1944.
Among those present, where the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of the British Royal Family.
Her Majesty has taken part in many previous commemorations. Below at the 40th anniversary, in 1984, with US President Ronald Reagan:

In 1994:

 



And in 2004:

 

 

 

During this year's three-day State visit, we saw the Queen don an impressive array of gorgeous outfits - let's have a closer look at them, and at the jewels she accesorized them with!

 

Departing St Pancras International station in London on Thursday, 5 June, on her way to Paris, the Queen wore a white coat and a navy hat with white bow, complemented by her sapphire-and-diamond grapes brooch, a piece she inherited from the Queen Mother:

 

 

 

 

 

Upon arrival at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Her Majesty had swapped her white coat for a white jacket with black trimming and pewter-coloured sequins, to match her dress, and matching hat:

 

 

 

The outfit was completed with the addition of a gold and diamond brooch in the shape of a spray of sorghum (a type of millet), a gift to Her Majesty from the President of Botswana in 2007, when the Queen led the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Kampala, Uganda:

 

 

Then it was time for another change of outfit, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were received by French President Hollande at the Arc de Triomphe, where a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior took place. The Queen looked pretty in a pastel pink, Chanel-style tweed suit with matching hat (a rather peculiar, sort of inverted-toadstool kind of thing, the tell the truth...), accessorized with her Williamson diamond brooch:

 

 

 

As she does only on special occasions (she did so at the weddings of both Prince William and Zara Phillips), the Queen completed her outfit with cream-coloured accessories: her trademark Launer handbag and a pair of shoes with a cute bow!

 

 



 

 

 

 Probably one of the most easily recognizable brooches in Her Majesty's collection, this stunning sparkler was made by Cartier in 1953 and features the Williamson pink diamond, weighing a rather impressive 23.6 carats and considered the finest pink diamond ever discovered. The stone was a wedding gift to Princess Elizabeth from Canadian geologist Dr Williamson: it was then cut and set as the centrepiece of a new platinum brooch, designed by Frederick Mew of Cartier in 1953.

The Queen has notably worn the brooch at the weddings of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer and of Prince Edward.

It was also one of the pieces in the Queen's collection on show at the "Cartier - Style and History" exhibition held in Paris earlier this year (for my post on the exhibition, see here).

 

Later in the day, the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, attended a Queen's Birthday Garden Party hosted by Sir Peter Ricketts, Her Majesty's Ambassador to the French Republic.

For this occasion, the Queen donned a white dress many will recall she first wore for the Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant in June 2012, accessorized with a piece I'm not familiar with, a floral brooch in what appears to be a yellow, rose and white gold setting (most probably with diamonds).

 

 

 

 

The following day, 6 June, Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh departed Paris for Normandy, where they attended the Service of Remembrance at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Bayeux and met veterans. Afterwards, it was time for a lunch for Heads of State and Government given by the President of the French Republic at the Château de Bénouville and then, in the afternoon, for the actual D-Day commemoration at Sword Beach (Ouistreham).

For the day's events, the Queen chose a chartreuse green coat and flower printed dress by Stuart Parvin, with a flower embellished hat in a matchin shade of green by Rachel Trevor Morgan.

The addition of the impressive Queen Victoria's Fringe brooch completed the outfit.

 

 

 

 

 

The Fringe brooch is a piece attributed to Garrard & Co., made in 1856 for Queen Victoria using diamonds she had received as a gift from the Sultan of Turkey. It is a personal jewel, not an heirloom of the crown, and as such it has been passed through the generations, first to Queen Alexandra, then to Queen Mary, to the Queen Mother (who wore it at her daughter's coronation in 1953) and thence to the Queen at the Queen Mother's death in 2002.

 

In the evening, it was time for a State banquet in Her Majesty's honour, given by President Hollande at the Elysée Palace.

For this evening engagement, a black tie affair, the Queen wore a white-and-silver sequinned evening gown, with the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara and the Coronation necklace and earrings. The red riband of the Order of the Legion of Honour was held in place with another brooch from the Queen Mother's collection, in the shape of a posy of ruby and diamond stylized flowers tied with a diamond bow (the Queen was appointed Grand Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honour in 1948, when still Princess Elizabeth).

 

 

 

The look was set off with dainty T-bar evening silver shoes and a silver Launer evening bag:

This morning, 7 June, there was time for a couple of other engagements, before the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh departed for London to attend the Epsom Derby this afternoon - first the couple paid a visit to the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, at the Hotel de Ville. Afterwards, they visited the
Marché aux Fleurs, Paris' historic flower market, which was dedicated to Her Majesty.

The Queen was in a pale heather boucle suit with lace trim and matching hat and a brooch in the shape (quite appropriately!) of a spray of six diamond flowers:

 

As worn at Ascot in 2009.

 

The Queen departed Villacoublay Aiport in the same outfit:

 



Let's now have a quick glimpse at what other royal ladies present at the D-Day anniversary ceremonies chose to wear:

 

The Duchess of Cornwall (chatting to the wife of British Prime Minister, Samantha Cameron).

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

 



 

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands with US President Obama.

 

The Duchess of Cambridge.

Queen Mathilde of the Belgians.