Queen Mary of Denmark Wears Queen Alexandrine’s Sapphire Tiara to the Vietnamese State Banquet

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The state banquet in Copenhagen on Monday evening gave Queen Mary of Denmark her first formal occasion of the fall season to bring out treasures from the royal collection jewelry. Dressed to the nines for the gala dinner honoring Vietnamese President Tô Lâm and his wife, First Lady Ngô Phương Ly, Mary appeared in Queen Alexandrine’s Sapphire Tiara, a rarely seen diadem that has been associated with the Danish royal family for generations.

According to the Danish Royal House, the tiara was given as a wedding gift to Queen Alexandrine, King Frederik’s great-grandmother, upon her marriage to the future King Christian X in 1898. The Court Jeweller reports that the gift-givers were Alexandrine’s Russian royal relatives, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. (Though Alexandrine was born a duchess in Germany, her mother was a grand duchess in the House of Romanov.)

Iben Kaufmann/Royal House of Denmark

The modified version of Queen Alexandrine’s Sapphire Tiara that Queen Mary is wearing for the banquet.

Over the following century, the tiara passed through several generations of the Danish royal family, was altered repeatedly to suit the fashions of successive eras, and was eventually auctioned by Bruun Rasmussen in 2018, selling for approximately $290,000. The Royal Collection reacquired it from a private owner in 2024. Working in close collaboration with jewelry designers Diana Holstein and Hanan Emquies, Queen Mary helped redesign the piece in a fully reversible new design that allows it to be worn as a tiara, necklace, or brooch. Though Queen Mary wore the tiara on Monday as a bandeau diadem, eagle-eyed royal watchers might notice she wore the headpiece’s top jewel pinned to a piece of blue velvet as a bracelet, perfectly matching her midnight blue gown by Danish designer Jesper Høvring.

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A close-up of Queen Mary and King Frederik’s arrival. The jewels that used to be at the top of the tiara have been refashioned as a part of a bracelet.

Martin Sylvest Andersen//Getty Images

The King and Queen of Denmark seen welcoming Vietnamese President Tô Lâm and First Lady Ngô Phương Ly to the banquet.

Monday’s banquet capped off the first day of a three-day state visit by Vietnam’s president, the first by a Vietnamese head of state to Denmark in several years. Earlier in the day, Queen Mary accompanied the First Lady to a library and cultural center in Copenhagen, where the two met with local school children and viewed a presentation of an art project by guest artist Sofia Hagström Møller. The afternoon continued with a visit to the Court Theatre, where dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet performed in the Bournonville style—a classical ballet technique developed in Denmark in the 19th century and considered a cornerstone of the Scandinavian country’s cultural heritage.

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The First Lady and Queen Mary at the ballet.

On Tuesday, Queen Mary will join Mrs. Ngô for a trip to Copenhagen Contemporary, a center for international contemporary art, before lunch at Gro Spiseri, a restaurant located in a greenhouse on the roof of ØsterGro, Denmark’s first urban rooftop farm.

The state visit carries particular personal significance for the Danish royal family. King Frederik’s late father, Prince Henrik, spent part of his childhood in Hanoi, and in 2022, then-Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary made their most recent official visit to Vietnam. Denmark was also one of the first Western countries to recognize North Vietnam in 1971, and this year marks the 55th anniversary of the two countries’ diplomatic relationship.

Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.