Every royal bride needs a tiara and some take the diadem game to another level with their picks. Princess Eugenie is one of them as her tiara choice wasn’t just unusual, it involved a gem that no one had seen in public for decades.

Dame Margaret Greville was one of the leading society hostesses in the first half of the twentieth century and upon her death in 1942, she bequeathed much of her impressive jewellery collection to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). This included the striking Greville Emerald Kokoshnik Tiara. 

Greville commissioned a new tiara from French jeweller Boucheron in 1919 in the Russian kokoshnik style. With countless brilliant and rose-cut diamonds set in platinum with a 93.70 carat cabochon-cut emerald set in the centre, it is a stunning piece. 

The hostess wore the emerald tiara only once publicly, to King George and Queen Elizabeth’s 1937 coronation at Westminster Abbey. 

The Queen Mother frequently wore many pieces from the Greville bequest, including a diamond honeycomb tiara also from Boucheron, the diamond Greville Festoon Necklace, and the Diamond Peardrop Earrings. However, she was never publicly seen wearing the emerald and diamond tiara. 

The tiara did eventually re-appear, though. 

In 2018, Princess Eugenie married Jack Brooksbank at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. She arrived for the ceremony in a Rolls Royce Phantom and appeared with the Greville Emerald Kokoshnik Tiara on her head.

The princess borrowed the tiara from her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who inherited it upon her mother’s death in 2002.