MONACO - At her royal wedding, Britain's Kate Middleton donned an heirloom tiara charged with historical significance. Princess Charlene of Monaco opted for something more personal, choosing a bold, asymmetrical creation that symbolizes the onetime Olympic swimmer's love for the sea.
Made by French-German jeweler Lorenz Baumer, the "Diamond Foam" tiara, in white gold and with nearly 60 carats' worth of diamonds, evokes the spray thrown off a crashing wave. Thin strips of precision-cut diamonds arch up from behind the left ear and fan out in an almost punkish explosion at the temple. Large, round-cut diamonds, the largest weighing 8 carats, punctuate the ends of the sparkling arcs.
"Princess Charlene is a swimmer, and Monaco is this little contort on the Mediterranean, so the reference to the sea was something very personal for her and at the same time a symbol of the Monegasque people," Baumer said.
The princess wore the headpiece to the lavish multicourse gala dinner that capped the two-day festivities around Charlene's long-awaited marriage to Monaco's ruling prince, Albert II. The best man was Albert's cousin Chris Le Vine of Philadelphia.
Baumer said the palace contacted him about five months before the wedding to ask him to submit designs for a tiara that was to be among the prince's wedding gifts to his betrothed. Baumer submitted three sketches, as did "all the major jewelry houses you can think of."
"They spread the drawings out. None of them had the names of the houses, just the drawings, and the prince and princess chose mine," said Baumer, who is also artistic director for Paris luxury label Louis Vuitton's fine-jewelry line. "It was really an honor."
Baumer traveled to Monaco for the first of four meetings with Charlene, "who received me in the palace wearing a sweat suit - she's really relaxed." The princess, who before her civil marriage Friday was known as Charlene Wittstock, gave Baumer ideas on how to improve the design.
The jeweler, an engineer by training, said the tiara can be taken apart to be used as a small or large brooch or a hairpiece. It comes with a chic little screwdriver topped with flourishing Cs for Charlene.
How was collaborating with Charlene?
"It was wonderful. She's not at all like the image some may people have of her as kind of cold and distant. She's sweet but also has a strong idea of what she wants and she knows how to make herself heard and respected, but in a soft way.
"I've no doubt she's going to make a great princess," he said with a smile.