The Princess of Wales wore Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara with a yellow gown on Tuesday, October 20, at the state banquet King Charles III and Queen Camilla gave at Windsor Castle for Sultan Haitham bin Tarik of Oman. It was the second time she has worn a tiara this year, and on both occasions she reached for the same piece.
The dinner opened a state visit that runs until Thursday, October 22, with the King and Queen as hosts at Windsor. No Sultan of Oman had come to Britain on a state visit since March 1982, when Queen Elizabeth II received Sultan Qaboos bin Said. That makes this the first such visit in 44 years, counting from 1982 to 2026. Charles has traveled to Oman four times himself, most recently in January 2020, when he flew to Muscat to offer condolences after Sultan Qaboos died.
The gown
Royal-fashion trackers identified the dress as a design by the Lebanon-based couturier Elie Saab. It was made from draped silk, with a braided collar at the neckline, sleeves that fell like a cape, a gathered waist and a full pleated skirt. Before the banquet, Kensington Palace released a new black-and-white portrait of the couple, taken at Frogmore House by Greg Williams, a British photographer better known for candid pictures of film stars at Cannes and Venice.
Elie Saab is a label she has used before. She chose a blush gown from the house for the 2023 wedding of Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan and Princess Rajwa, and wore Elie Saab separates at Royal Ascot in 2019 before bringing them back for a Buckingham Palace garden party in 2023. Her accessories were repeats too: an Anya Hindmarch gold-glitter clutch first carried at the 2020 BAFTAs and what appeared to be the Gianvito Rossi crystal pumps, priced at $2,795, that she first wore on the Caribbean tour of March 2022.
A 1914 tiara with a royal back story
Garrard made the Lover’s Knot for Queen Mary, grandmother of Elizabeth II, in 1914. Its design runs to 19 diamond arches shaped as lover’s knots with bows, each with a hanging pearl. Diana, Princess of Wales, wore it during her marriage, and it has since become Catherine’s most frequently worn tiara and her usual choice for state banquets.
Her tiara record is short by royal standards. Since joining the family she has worn just five in public: the Lover’s Knot, the Cartier Halo, the Lotus Flower, the Strathmore Rose and the Oriental Circlet, the last of them added in December 2025 for the German state visit. Her only other tiara night of 2026 came in March, at the banquet for Nigeria’s president and first lady, and she wore the Lover’s Knot then as well.
The rest of her jewelry also came from the royal collection: the Greville Chandelier Earrings, assembled by Cartier in London between 1918 and 1929 from a range of modern diamond cuts, and Queen Mary’s Diamond Choker Bracelet. She wore the sash and badge of the Royal Victorian Order with her Royal Family Order of King Charles III, the sash pinned with a deco-style diamond brooch.
Who else wore what
Queen Camilla wore a deep blue gown by Fiona Clare with the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. Across it she wore the Order of Oman, conferred on her only that morning. Princess Anne chose a gold gown and the Meander Tiara, which her grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, is believed to have been given as a wedding present in 1903. The Duchess of Gloucester wore cream.
At the table the Princess was seated on the Sultan’s right. Earlier she had walked in the royal procession beside Sayyid Khalid Hilal Al Busaidi, Oman’s Minister of the Royal Court, while Prince William walked in with Dina Mack. The Sultan’s visit ends on Thursday, October 22.
Further reading
Image: NZ Defence Force, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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