The Brooch Is Back

The Queen wore an old diamond to the Chelsea Flower Show, and we are absolutely convulsing on tippéd toes in our yellow pantyhose at what this means for the future of the monarchy. Get into the custom golf cart (stick shift! A queen never automates her transmission, plus she’s addicted to the shaft) and hold on to your control-top spandex because I’m about to take you for a ride: the flowered badge Lil donned is 77 years old and predates her ascension to Queen.

Woman and Home, a British lifestyle site of which I am 95th-in-line for editor-in-chief, clocks it as a Cartier piece meant to look like two sets of flowers branching out from a shared gold stem. According to People, the “stunning sapphire, ruby and diamond brooch depicting a floral spray…was a gift for her parents — King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother — on her 19th birthday,” along with a matching pair of earrings. I would’ve asked for a Sephora gift card and iPod Nano if my parents were going big for a birthday, but I’m sure a teen who wasn’t allowed to go to high school surely would have pretended to like this too.

The Queen wore this very brooch for a portrait at Buckingham Palace with young failson Charles in 1949, and again for a floral festival in Australia in 2011. Florals for spring…groundbreaking. It appears that it’s been more than a decade since she trotted the thing out, though, even with the sentimental value attached to it.

At this point, I say that she should hawk it at a pawn shop and buy herself something equally nice but a little bit more modern that would match the sparkle in her eye. I know it’s hard, but I can relate: I used to wear a pin on my backpack in college that said “book jockey” that I’ve since Kondoed out of my life, and I’m happier for it. Live a little, hon! The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are obsessed with owning these Cartier panther rings, and this one’s only $178,000.