I love crowns and am really vested in them. My logo was only the first of many crowns that I appropriated and assimilated and it truly would have been a shame if this Queen gig would have been a flash in the pan. Intially, I chose the logo crown because it was very Josephine and it’s been the jumping off point for endless others.
Early on, some asked me, perhaps a little bitchily, just who the heck had made me Queen. Well, I’ll tell you what I told them. “I’m self anointed. It’s a Napoleonic concept.” I really revel in that. It gives me the jollies and starts my days right. Embrace the concept and you too can be Queen (or King) – just not on my patch of cashmere.
I wear a crown almost daily and before you get a vision of me as Queen Victoria stting behind the computer in a jeweled coronet and lace lappets, let me explain.
Currently, I wear a diamond crown pendant mixed in with stands of pearls. It’s a jeweled version of my logo crown and I stumbled on it purely by accident a few years ago. My good friend Frank Pollak offers amazing, fine Art Deco and other vinatge jewelry on 1st Dibs. Frank has a gorgeous Art Deco conference room that overlooks Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue and when I’m in New York and need a place to show cashmere to buyers he often, generously, lets me conduct my appointments there. Lucky me. I rarely leave empty handed either. My diamond crown was a real score. Hung from a chain around my neck or pinned to a black beret military style, I rarely step out without it.
Do you remember my post on Sandi Miller Burrows? She of the fabulous monogram pendants. Well, since my first post we have become friends. Although my pendant is still on the drawing board, I have been inclined to have her design one that incorporates a crown. I wouldn’t be the first woman to desire a jeweled monogram surmounted by a crown.
Princess Margaret was quite the bon vivant of her day. One of the first modern, royal celebrities, she was strikingly beautiful and unburdened by the royal responsibility that was carried by her sister Lilibet. Popular and and a real rebel, she was once quoted as saying, “disobedience is a joy”. She had a penchant for handsome young rogues, living in the fast lane and diamonds. As Princess Royal she was perfectly within her rights to sport a crown on her head and a dashing gentleman on her arm, but sometimes she opted for a crown on her lapel and a rogue in, oh never mind.
Below is a portarit of Princess Margaret, looking deceptively angelic, and the auction tear sheet for a diamond bauble given to her on the occasion of her 21st birthday. A curvaceous M surmounted by a diamond diadem, it was auctioned off a few years ago. I wonder who is the lucky person who wears it now?
And then there was Catherine the Great of Russia – another royal of legendary libido. In researching this post, I discovered that in her older years, she actually had someone “test drive” her lovers to make sure that they were of suitable prowess before they were admitted to her bedchamber. No sense in wasting a night with someone beautiful who could not deliver, is there now?
But to get back on track: while Catherine the Great preferred her crowns on her head, her ladies-in-waiting wore a monogram brooch to signify their service to the empress. I wondered why not a “C”? I imagine that “E” is for empress though as far as a monogram goes, it seem pretty generic. I could envision myself wearing something like this, except with a CS, hanging from a chain around my neck. Suggesting antiquity my pendant would be chunky, with rose cut diamonds that are slightly irregular, set in blackened, rhodium plated white gold. Divine, no? Sandi, are you listening?
