Pimlico – a Jewel in the Crown

If you have had your EARS open during the Royal Wedding you will be aware that Pimlico was the Jewel in the Royal Crown. Or to be more specific, a Pimlico Jeweller provided Kate’s earrings. The By Appointment jewellers are …. well by appointment, they decline to give their address on their website, and invite you to fill out a form in order to request an appointment. Always up for a challenge it took me 20 seconds of rooting around the internet to discover that the window of the ladies toilet in my favourite Indian Restaurant in Pimlico overlooks the royal secret (but that most of the real work gets done in Fulham).

As the provider of MI6 safe houses, and custodian to national secrets, my lips are sealed – Vindaloo & Chapatti wouldn’t tear the story of the royal earlobes from my lips. But it’s good to know that the story unfolded in Pimlico, and that there is an unusual addition to Pimlico’s wide range of more mundane shopping.

Of course there is a wider story to the Pimlico earrings – the designer being a friend of the Middletons, married to the county’s richest MP, and whose house was used as the stand-in for Buckingham Palace in “The King’s Speech”.  

But we don’t read the Daily Mail in Pimlico do we? (Click on the earring if you don’t live in Pimlico & do want to read the Daily Mail!)

The Pimlico Jewellers are Robinson Pelham a luxury London jeweller created as a home based business just 15 years ago by Kate Pelham Burn, Vanessa Chilton and Zoe Benyon to make British-made, privately commissioned pieces as well as seasonal collections. Although the earrings have had wide press reported, it is less well known that the earings were part of jewellry collection worn by the whole Middleton family (yes including the men).

Catherine’s earrings were diamond-set stylised oak leaves with a pear shaped diamond set drop and a pavé set diamond acorn suspended in the centre, Philippa’s were more floral in nature to compliment her headpiece worn during the wedding ceremony. The Mother of the bride, Carole Middleton had a tourmaline and diamond pendant and matching earrings and finally two gold stick pins, one with a single gold acorn at the head and the other with an oak leaf, were worn by the Father of the bride, Michael, and the bride’s brother, James.

Inspiration for the designs comes from the family’s new coat of arms which includes acorns and oak leaves and the earrings were made to echo a tiara lent to Catherine by the Queen.