For Queen Elizabeth, Royal Ascot is her Oscar season/Wimbledon/NBA Finals. It her favorite time of year, and she waits all year to bring out an assortment of colorful ensembles, crazy hats and her most beloved brooches. The Queen’s brooches are honestly one of my favorite topics of royal conversation. The Queen generally keeps her jewelry pretty simple for day appearances, sticking with pearl earrings, one of her favorite pearl necklaces, and gloves of course. But she always changes up the brooches, and God knows how many brooches she’s been stockpiling for a rainy day. So I give you this, a post devoted to the Queen’s Royal Ascot brooches. Thanks to Queen’s Jewel Vault Blog for the brooch IDs!
First up, here’s the Queen’s look on Day 1 of Royal Ascot – bright lime green. She paired this with her “Singapore Peranakan Diamond Jubilee Brooch.” Yellow gold paired with lime green is surprisingly great, who knew?
Here’s the Queen on Day 5 of Royal Ascot (she’s been every day, despite her husband’s hospitalization). She wore bright purple/magenta Stewart Parvin, and paired the look with the Irish Blossom diamond brooch. This is a big, beautiful brooch.
Here’s the Queen on Day 3, wearing Stewart Parvin again, this time a coat in pale mint green. She decided to go for one of her favorite brooches, the Jardine Star. I love that all of her brooches have names, by the way. They’re like her children or her dogs. She probably has a brooch named “Magpie” and one named “Starfish.” The Jardine Star is all-diamond, no colored stones. Best to coordinate with all of the Queen’s colorful outfits, I would assume.
The Queen on Ladies’ Day of Royal Ascot. She wore hot pink and another favorite brooch: her smallish pink sapphire, with a diamond surround. Finally, a colored stone!
And finally, here’s the Queen on Day 2 of Royal Ascot, wearing bright yellow and the Flame Lily Brooch. I feel like this is strongest look out of the whole Royal Ascot royal fashion show, although I did enjoy the mint green/Jardine Star look too.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Pacific Coast News.
Slayed.
I LOVE brooches! My grandmother always wore them, and had a *fabulous* collection (real and costume). Sadly, my bitchster-in-law™ got her mits on a lot of it when I was away at college, and to make a long war short, I only was able to wrestle one away. I wear it all the time.
Brooches were *everywhere* in the 80s; shame they’re so hard to find now. 😖
Take notes, Kate.
Kate would have no clue what to do with the brooches. She likes Kiki stuff that looks cheap, but costs a lot of money. Hope she never gets ahold of these to take them apart and make little dangling nothings out of them.
It makes me cringe at the thought of Kate getting her hands on any of these pieces.
They would all be covered by the wiglet anyway…
Cool!
All great uses of color. The magenta outfit and brooch combo is really pretty.
I wonder if older women use the Queen as style inspiration.
Is she known to repeat outfits?
Angela Kelly has said that fabric from existing outfits to make new ones.
She’ll also have evening gown embroidery unpicked and re-embroidered with the flowers of the next visiting nation.
Holy frack! Somebody needs to force Kate to live/dress this way for a season. Her head would explode.
Her color choices are so cheerful and flattering.
Totally agree – beautiful!
The colours: Only HM can carry those colours in a positive, uplifting, beautifully- regal appropriate way.
Yes. I should look half that good when I’m her age.
I read somewhere that she is purposely dressed colourfully so as to be visible in a crowd, for the public, and more so, for her people to keep tabs.
I enjoy her fashion. Age appropriate but still flattering bright and fun. One or two of the younger royals should take notes
She looks great. Like her own box of popsicles.
LOL! True. Popsicle colors.
I so enjoyed the broadcasts from Royal Ascot last week. Just gorgeous.
As much as I enjoy a good jewelry post, the horses were the true stand out! Love Lady Aurelia. Caravaggio deserves his own post- he is a gorgeous horse!
+1
Royal Ascot is a treat and appreciated – every last artistic headwear is beautiful/different.
so many outfits and hats… I wonder where they keep them.
I recently saw and article (Vanity Fair i think) about her best hats. And I had forgotten how attractive she was. She had a really nice figure in her late 20s, early 30s…
Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, has written about how they deal with her wardrobe. There is a matching documentary, but you can only find slices of it on youtube.
The more *memorable occasion outfits are added to the royal collection. Every so often, the royal collection exhibits them.
*Angela reworks many previously worn outfits into new dresses except the memorable occasion ones.
Currently, there are exhibits on HM’s dresses as well as from Diana.
One of my favorites from that time was her all lace day-dress ensemble from Australia, 1954 garden party. That is how you do all lace right, complete with parasol. There was that bad period in the 60s or 70s where she was addicted to floral shower caps, but otherwise her hats have been pretty good through the years.
Yeah she was let down by the death of millinery in the 1960s-1970s – that plus the fact that the clothing of that era was not conducive to formal dress-up of the kind demanded by being the Queen – and not flattering at all on middle-aged women! Things got better in the 1980s for her!
You can still see how pretty HRH is. So much charm and charisma in her smile. Plus, I have serious brooch envy.
Just a gentle nod to you. The Queen is always titled HM (Her Majesty) , not HRH. That stopped when she ascended the Throne in 1953. Nice to see the smiling, cheerful photos. Makes my day!
I say that – HRH is for the ‘underlings’, so to speak.
I want to know why the person behind her looks like she has a Pepsi sticker on her…
I think it is a name tag. Doesn’t everyone besides the Queen wear one??
Those are the name badges for Ascot.
I would totally wear the hot pink jacket with the pink sapphire brooch, and I’m closer to Kate’s age than to the Queen’s. I have always loved the Queen’s embrace of color.
Since she always wears it to stand out for the crowds, I wonder if Kate was attempting to take a page out of her book when she wore that pepto pink number the other day.
She is always impeccably tailored. Notice how the darts of all of her suits and dresses fall exactly at her actual bustline? Women’s bodies change as they age, and off-the-rack clothes don’t accommodate that fact. Nice to see an older woman so well turned out!
…Camilla of course sticks with her 3 string of pearl necklace which is just as much a star as HM brooches…I like HMs coats & hats but the dresses underneath just no… Camillas dresses are still lovely…she has a good style sense since she got married…
Camilla has several pearl necklaces. Maybe Charles keeps giving them to her? She also wears the same pair of pearl cluster earrings almost every day.
+100
Camilla, DOC is another – always regal and well dressed. She maintains the younger version of mystique, that HM had, who is now at another level of regal elegance.
I love that mint colored hat…that color is divine! I love how she embraces colors.
I think it was once said HM does this deliberately “So people can see her”
I love the whole mint outfit too, it’s my 1st favorite of the bunch. Always love brooches.
My favorite too. It’s very retro, minty green with atomic starburst.
I think she looks amazing in the lime!
She looks lovely. The last of the regal royals.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is often Very Regal in her evening gowns, many of which she designs herself.
+1
Beautiful! Love the colors on her – that green! And love the brooches. She always looks good.
The Queen looks amazing in bright colors, and her style in brooches is timeless. What a class act.
I want to grow up to look just like her. Marvelous!!!!
No interest in her brooch game but her hat game, were it an Olympic sport, would win all the golds.
Killed it!!
Thank you for this article! I loved it, what a fabulous, stylish Lady our darling Queenie is!
Those brooches are gorgeous. HM knows her way around colours and jewels, that’s for sure.
Love every outfit! And love the idea that all of her brooches have names. Also cracking up about Ascot being HM’s Awards Season/NBA Finals! Thank you for making me laugh on break during a truly horrible day 😂😂
I have no time for the other Royals, and the whole “hereditary priveledge” thing is BS, but damn I love the Queen! She works hard, even at an age when most people are happily long retired, she has impeccable style, and that smile and twinkle in her eye always make me think she’d be an absolute riot to chat with over a couple of G&Ts.