Meghan Markle reached for Princess Diana’s aquamarine ring at her 2018 wedding reception and then again that October in Tonga — a choice that was not a one-off. Kate Middleton has done the same with pieces from Diana’s collection, turning family heirlooms into fixtures of royal dressing rather than occasional curiosities.
FilmoGaz tracked nine public occasions in which the two duchesses wore Diana’s jewelry; across decades the collection has surfaced dozens of times on both women. The appearances include necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings worn at state events, military parades and charity ceremonies, with several items appearing more than once in recent years.
The most recurrent single item in public memory is the aquamarine ring. Diana first wore it in June 1997 at an auction of her clothes at Christie’s in London; the piece was a gift from her friend Lúcia Flecha de Lima and was given as a replacement for Diana’s engagement ring after her 1996 divorce. Markle wore that same ring to her wedding reception in May 2018, then again at a royal engagement in Tonga in October 2018. The ring itself was part of a set that included an aquamarine bracelet and five strands of pearls.
Other headline moments link Middleton to Diana’s better-known necklaces and earrings. Middleton wore the Delhi Durbar Emerald Choker for the 2022 Earthshot Prize ceremony; Diana was known to favor that choker, and she wore it as far back as a 1982 charity concert at the Barbican. Middleton also revived Diana’s sapphire earrings at Trooping the Colour in both 2022 and 2023, repeating a look that has become associated with ceremonial royal appearances.
Earlier pieces in the collection have their own lives. A brooch originally made in 1863 for Princess Alexandra of Denmark was worn by Diana as a pendant in 1986 during a visit to Austria. Middleton first wore that brooch in November 2022 while welcoming the president of South Africa to London, reintroducing a piece Diana turned into a pendant decades earlier.
Markle has also worn items described as coming from Diana’s private collection beyond the aquamarine ring. On the royal couple’s trip to Nigeria, Markle wore a cross pendant reportedly from Diana’s private collection, another example of how the jewels have been used in present-day royal travel and engagements.
The pattern is clear: Diana’s jewelry is treated as a stock of pieces available to senior duchesses and reused on repeat occasions. That reuse is part deliberate family continuity and part practical wardrobe — the same set of showpiece jewels moves between public events and is adapted to different diasporas of royal duty.
There is, however, a recurrent friction. Many of the pieces are presented as tributes to Diana, yet they are not always employed the way she wore them. Diana wore the brooch as a pendant in 1986; Middleton wore it as a brooch in 2022. The aquamarine ring, first shown publicly by Diana in 1997 at an auction of her own clothes, became Markle’s wedding-night ring and later a travel accessory in Tonga. These reassignments reshape the items’ meanings: homage on one hand, contemporary restaging on the other.
The pattern raises a simple question about curation and continuity: are the jewels being used to maintain a straightforward line of remembrance, or are they being repurposed to serve the needs and tastes of two very public duchesses? The answer is both. The repetition of the sapphire earrings at successive Trooping parades reads as ritual; the repurposing of the brooch and the aquamarine ring reads as reinvention.
Recordable facts leave one practical gap. Of the nine tracked appearances, FilmoGaz can name several that have become emblematic — the aquamarine on Markle in 2018, the Delhi Durbar choker at the 2022 Earthshot ceremony, the sapphire earrings at Trooping in 2022 and 2023, the brooch in November 2022 and the cross pendant on the Nigeria trip — but not every instance has been cataloged here. That gap matters because it is where future reinterpretations will show themselves.
The most consequential near-term reality is this: the duchesses have shown they will reuse Diana’s jewels, sometimes as direct homage and sometimes in newly practical or stylistic roles. Expect more repetitions and reworkings at the next major royal events; the collection remains active, its meanings both inherited and newly negotiated with every public appearance.
