The Tiara

When Queen Victoria married in 1840, she wore a white wedding dress, thereby setting a fashion trend that continues to this day. 

At least that is the popular version.  The fact that other members of royalty had previously worn white to their nuptials as far back as Mary Queen of Scots in 1558 is just one of those inconvenient facts that we should ignore.  As every native Texan knows, never let a few facts get in the way of a good story.

A score of years later, Abraham Lincoln, after being elected to the presidency, used the four months waiting time before the inauguration to grow a beard.  On the advice of his wife, his advisors, and Grace Bedell (an eleven-year-old supporter who famously wrote Lincoln suggesting he grow whiskers to conceal a weak chin), the president-elect adopted a style of beard known as the chin curtain beard.  The style caught on, and beards became a symbol of his determination and leadership during the Civil War.  (In the case of the author, a beard is a symbol of laziness and an aversion to using sharp implements near the throat before consuming coffee.)

In early twentieth century America, every well-dressed man wore an undershirt beneath his dress shirt.  Usually cotton, they served two functions:  they absorbed sweat, keeping the wearer cooler, drier and more comfortable when wearing a wool shirt.  The fashion quickly died out in 1934 when Americans went to the movie theater and watched Clark Gable take off his shirt in the movie It Happened One Night to reveal a bare chest.  While no documentation exists, sales of the undershirt dropped between 45-75% depending on which version of what may be an urban legend you choose to believe.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy famously didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration, breaking tradition.  Almost immediately, the haberdashery industry was dealt a death blow, ending the popularity of men wear formal hats.  That’s the popular version anyway.  Actually, JFK did wear a hat to the inauguration, but took it off at the inauguration.

Kennedy was actually being heavily lobbied by the hat industry to wear hats more frequently  in a probably futile effort to revive a dying fashion trend.  In the years before his election, the trend to wear formal hats was already dying out in both Europe and America, perhaps because men in both continents, tired of wearing uniforms during the war, were just rejecting formal hats.  In the end, the Kennedy inauguration wasn’t the death of hats, it was the funeral.

And then there was Audrey Hepburn and that little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s…. Well, you get the idea.  Sometimes it only takes a single event to rewrite the rules of what is fashionable.

All of the above is an introduction to what I really want to talk about:  tiaras.  You know, the shiny jewelry doohickey that women and little princesses-in-training wear whenever there is even the slightest justification.  I suppose it is scientifically impossible, but this weird craving for all things sparkly shared by women, crows and pack rats might indicate a hidden genetic link of some kind.

The origin of the word tiara comes from ancient Persia where cloth or metal bands were worn by the chiefs or nobility.  From there, the fashion quickly spread to Egypt and Greece.  The Greeks gave the victors in athletic competitions like the Olympics were awarded wreaths made of laurel or olive branches.  As the Roman Empire grew, they, too, adopted the tiara or diadem as a mark of rank, using gold or silver to create the head band.

Note.  Tiara?  Diadem?  What’s the difference.  Well, the tiara is much fancier and might have jewels (think of a grand crown, but smaller and designed to sit on the forehead rather than the entire head).   A diadem is a decorated head band or a simple circlet worn around the head.  Still confused?  Rocky Balboa wore a diadem while running through the streets of Philadelphia, Wonder Woman wears a tiara.

From the Roman Empire, the tiara spread across Europe, its use usually reserved for the highest royalty.  Over time, however, the tiara slowly fell out of fashion until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the rise of Emperor Napoleon.  Wanting the grandest empire in Europe, with the most formality and grandeur, Napoleon gifted his wife, Josephine with many jeweled tiaras, some of which are still the proud possessions of some of Europe’s royal families.

In Europe, as tiaras became popular again, aristocratic women began to wear them to formal occasions.  Etiquette dictated certain rules, however (and pretty much those rules still apply in certain circles today).  A woman could wear a tiara to any “white tie” event. An unmarried woman never wore a tiara, but on her wedding day, she wore a tiara owned by her family.  After the wedding, she wore either a tiara that was her personal property or a tiara owned by her husband’s family.  There was an exception made for royal princesses, who could wear tiaras belonging to the royal family after their eighteenth birthdays.

The height of the popularity of the tiara was the last two decades of the nineteenth century up to the start of the first World War.  The terrible death toll of the war, followed by a depression and yet another war, made the ostentatious wearing of jewelry unfashionable for all but the royal families.  

This suddenly changed when Elizabeth Taylor was given a diamond tiara by her husband, Mike Todd.  If you are counting, he was the third of seven husbands, and the one who probably started her fascination with diamonds.  As she later wrote in her autobiography:

“When he gave me this tiara, he said, ‘You’re my queen, and I think you should have a tiara.’ I wore it for the first time when we went to the Academy Awards. It was the most perfect night, because Mike’s film Around the World in 80 Days won for Best Picture. It wasn’t fashionable to wear tiaras then, but I wore it anyway, because he was my king.”

The tiara was created by Cartier sometime in the 1920's for Florence Gould, the wife of Frank Jay Gould, the famous owner of French Riviera Casinos and the son of the infamous railroad tycoon Jay Gould.  The tiara, known as the "Tiara of Nine Flights" was part of Florence Gould's extensive diamond collection that was sold after her death.

Liz wore the tiara everywhere.  She wore it to film openings; she wore it to Hollywood parties.  She would have worn it to grocery stores if she had stooped to go to grocery stores.  And as a fashion icon, she made the tiara popular again.  I spent a few minutes playing with Google this afternoon.  Think of a woman famous in the last fifty years, then google their name with ‘tiara’ and almost immediately, a photo of her wearing a tiara pops up.  Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Sara Jessica Parker, Ivanka Trump, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Oprah…. Evidently, everyone.  Even my wife, The Doc, has one, but she won it in a bowling tournament.

When Liz passed away in 2011, her famous jewel collection (which included not only the tiara but the famous pearl known as La Peregrina) sold at auction for $156 million, of which slightly over $4 million was for the tiara.  The identity of the anonymous buyer remains a secret, at least for now.

Sooner or later, someone will show up wearing it.