Today marks the 135th of the Birth of Daisy Fellowes, former Princess de Broglie, who was born on this day in 1962! The Aristocrat and Heiress who married a French Prince and then a British Banker, Daisy Fellowes was a Socialite and Fashion Icon as the Paris editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and her most spectacular legacy is her iconic Cartier ‘Collier Hindoo’ Tutti Frutti Necklace!

In 1936, Daisy Fellowes commissioned Cartier to create a “Collier Hindou” using her own collection of carved emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds, based off the design of a necklace made for the Maharajah of Patna in 1935.

Very similar to the Maharajah’s piece, which incorporated old- cut diamonds, carved rubies and emeralds, the Collier Hindou was a knot of twisted diamond vines studded with emerald leaves and berries of ruby and sapphire. An unlucky stone in Indian tradition, sapphires were obviously not used in the Maharajah’s collar, but this necklace used them in excess, with borders of sapphire beads along the top and bottom edges and an additional fringe of thirteen faceted stones suspended along the front.

Daisy Fellowes first wore the Cartier ‘Hindoo’ Necklace for a series of portraits by Cecil Beaton in 1936, which were featured in Harper’s Bazaar.

Daisy Fellows was also pictured wearing the Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace for a Dinner at the Hôtel Lambert, home of Baron Alexis de Rede, in Paris in 1950.

Daisy Fellowes most notably wore her Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace for the legendary Bal du Siècle at the Palazzo Labia in Venice in 1951, when she was described:

Daisy Fellowes regularly voted the best dressed woman in France and America, portrayed the Queen of Africa from the Tiepolo frescoes in Wurzburg.  She wore a dress trimmmed with leopard print, the first time we had seen such a thing (still fashionable today, sixty years on), and was attended by four young men painted the colour of mahogany.

After Daisy Fellowes’ death in 1962, the Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace and Earrings  were inherited by her eldest daughter, Princess Emmeline, Countess de Casteja, who had the necklace altered by replaced the back portion with jewels instead of the original silk cords.

Originally fastened on a cord of Indian silk, the necklace could be adjusted to be worn at varying lengths along the neck, but this feature was changed in 1963 when Fellowes’s daughter Emmeline de Casteja had the strings replaced by a continuation of the necklace’s jewelled motif.

After the death of the Countess de Casteja in 1986, the Cartier ‘Hindoo’ Necklace and its matching carved emerald and diamond earrings surfaced at auction at Sotheby’s in Geneva in 1991, and was purchased for £2,134,891 by Cartier and entered the Cartier Collection.

Daisy Fellowes’ Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace and Earrings was loaned to Princess Caroline of Monaco for the Red Cross Ball in Monte-Carlo in the summer of 1994.

The iconic Cartier ‘Hindoo’ Necklace was on display in the ‘Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity’ Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Last spring, we saw Daisy Fellowes’ Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace on display in the ‘Cartier: Islamic Inspiration and Modern Design’ Exhibit at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

A few weeks later, the Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace was worn by Princess Gauravi Kumari of Jaipur, the sister of Maharaja Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur, in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar.

Currently, Daisy Fellowes’ Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace is on display in the landmark Cartier Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where it can be seen until November.

Daisy Fellowes’ Cartier Tutti Frutti Necklace

The Cartier Pearl Drop Tiara