• Queen Elizabeth II has many pearl necklaces and she wears them on every occasion, big or small.
• She loves them and the tradition of queens wearing pearl necklaces goes back many centuries.
• It is a tradition in the royal household for queens to don the pearls and Queen Elizabeth II is no exception to this tradition.

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Queen Elizabeth II and her pearl necklaces

The head of the royal household of England, Queen Elizabeth II is rarely seen without her pearl necklace. She loves it and traditionally it is the item of jewelry that queens have been wearing for many centuries now.

Leslie Field, author of The Queen’s Jewels said:

“Pearls are traditional for Queens going back one thousand years — there has never been a Queen who didn’t wear pearls,”

Describing the qualities of pearls, she added:

“They were rare, beautiful and lustrous and the more you wear them, the more lustrous they become.”

The queen of England has a great and good collection of these pearl jewelry. She has a single-stranded pearl necklace and also a six-stranded one. The latter was gifted to her when she visited Qatar.

Queen and her appropriate necklace

Despite a huge collection of wonderful necklaces, the Queen prefers to most of the time wear a three-strand classic design created from heirloom family pearls.

Talking about it, Leslie said:

“It’s the necklace that she feels is appropriate — she wants to wear pearls every day as her mother and grandmother did before her,”

“She wouldn’t wear a diamond necklace to go to a charity lunch — it is simply traditional that a lady would wear pearls during the day.”

The said necklace has graduated pearls and there is also a diamond clasp. She had made this after she ascended the throne after the death of her father.

She wears this when she makes the rare TV addresses for the nation. And she had also worn the same necklace at Princess Beatrice’s intimate wedding ceremony.

Queen and her love for pearls

Leslie has the largest number of photos of royal jewelry-around 150k of them. She said that the queen’s love for pearls began early in her life. It was a tradition that her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria had started.

Leslie also revealed:

“She gave each of her daughters and granddaughters a pearl every year on their birthday so that by the time they came of age at 18, they would have enough pearls for a necklace,”

This tradition of birthday pearl gifts was started by her father George VI who gave her a thin platinum chain and added two pearls to it on every birthday.

In 1935, her grandfather King George V gave her a three-strand pearl necklace. Her sister Margaret got a two-strand pearl necklace. They wore it at their parent’s coronation ceremony in 1937.

Leslie disclosed:

“She was still a little girl but he wanted his two girls to have their first pearl necklace from grandpapa.”

In 1947, she wore a two-strand pearl necklace when she wed Prince Philip. Kate too likes pearls and has made it stylish by wearing them.

Jeweler Claudia Bradby said:

“Pearls are associated with those very big moments,”

“We sell a lot to brides, mother of the brides, significant birthdays, wedding anniversary gifts — if you want to look chic and well-turned-out, pearls are just perfect.”

The complete bio of Queen Elizabeth II is here