Weekly Royal Fashion Awards: June 16-22, and More

Best of the Week

Little bit of this, little bit of that...

Letizia at a meeting and at a mass to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Felipe's grandfather; Mathilde at an awards ceremony; Mette-Marit and Haakon hosting a dinner; Máxima on more province visits

Some of you were disappointed in a relatively tame Ascot showing last week; I was disappointed in a tame showing from everyone else in our regular cast of characters! This isn't everything, but it is the only things that held my attention: Letizia having some summer fun with color and in her proper princess best, Mathilde in a lovely print, Mette-Marit shaking up her hairdo, and Máxima in more hats-n'-jewels (and sharing a colorful thought with Charlotte Casiraghi in Giambattista Valli - there's two royals I never thought would end up in a sartorial comparison).

In other news, Sunday was National Day in Luxembourg!

L to R: Princess Tessy, Prince Louis, Princess Alexandra, the Hereditary Grand Duchess, the Hereditary Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess, the Grand Duke

A highlight of the celebrations is the Te Deum, for which the family gets all hatted up. This year, Alexandra wore Natan, Stéphanie was in Weill, and Maria Teresa sported Armani (these courtesy of Luxarazzi, where you can satisfy all your National Day needs). The highlight? MT wore some amethysts. Not terribly enchanted with the rest, I'm afraid. In the evening, there were tiaras - and more amethysts:

Maria Teresa wore the Belgian Scroll Tiara and her repeated Elie Saab gown, and Stéphanie wore an amethyst bandeau not seen in quite some time, which is delightful!

Judging by my inbox, though, there's a different tiara entirely that many of you are quite concerned about. Over the weekend Lady Melissa Percy, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, married Thomas van Straubenzee, longtime friend of Princes William and Harry, in what has repeatedly been billed as the society wedding of the year. The wedding pulled in a whole mess of well-known guests, but none upstaged the bride - and she made sure of that by her choice of headgear alone.

Video: News report on the wedding

Lady Melissa wore a large scrolling diamond tiara with a base of huge round diamonds. The tiara comes from the Percy family collection, and was worn to the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 by the then-Duchess, who was the bride's grandmother (she can be seen in the top pictures at this link). You could say that this was a secondary tiara in the collection, though, as the more important piece was the strawberry leaf coronet which included diamonds from a sword given to the third Duke by King George IV. It was worn to the 1953 coronation by the then-Dowager Duchess, who was Mistress of the Robes to the Queen Mother, but the tiara was stolen in 1963 while she was bringing it home from the jeweler to wear for a state banquet.

This is not the same diamond tiara worn at a rakish angle by Lady Melissa's sister, Lady Katie Percy, for her 2011 wedding to Patrick Valentine, so clearly the family collection's still doing just fine. (The two brides do appear to be wearing the same diamond necklace.) You may think Melissa bit off more tiara than she could chew, but I heartily applaud her go big or go home attitude! What a gorgeous tiara we wouldn't have seen otherwise...

Who was your best dressed last week?

Photos: Getty Images/ANB/Siste/ANP/DutchPhotoPress/WENN/Charles Caratini/SIP/Cour grand-ducale/RTL