Meghan wore her beloved Cartier Juste Un Clou most recently for her sit-down interview with CBS. Photo / YouTube @CBSSundayMorning
In her sit-down interview with CBS, trailed on Thursday and airing on Sunday, Meghan, Duchess of Susssex wears one of her favourite pieces.
When you are a member of the royal family, a certain amount of bling is par for the course. Yet the younger generation of modern royals have mostly mixed high and low-value jewellery to great effect, championing affordable brands like Missoma, Monica Vinader and Shaun Leane as part of their bid to appear more relatable to the public. In fact, even Queen Camilla has been known to do it, recently wearing Birmingham-based V by Laura Vann’s £115 ($333) Vintage Link Gold Chain Bracelet.
The Duchess of Sussex was once one such royal, regularly spotted wearing not only the aforementioned brands, but also more sentimental pieces, found in a flea market, or given to her by a friend. In recent months though, she’s seemingly scaled down her jewellery collection, instead focusing on a handful of pieces - with luxury price tags to match.
It ties in with the Duchess’ current championing of the “quiet luxury” trend, which is characterised by choosing expensive pieces, often in a neutral colour palette, that are well-made but relatively simple. Sofia Richie Grainge and Jennifer Lawrence (who shares a stylist, Jamie Mizrahi, with Meghan) are the current poster girls of the look. Meghan’s take on low-key luxe aligns with the recent launch of her lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, which is set to champion a similar aesthetic, albeit for jams, tableware and cookies (though so far we’ve only seen a minimalist limited offering of 50 jars of jam).
“During her days as a working royal, she had a lot more jewellery that she rotated, including lots of rings and bracelets,” explains the creator behind the Instagram account, Royal Fashion Police, which fastidiously tracks what Meghan, and other royals, are wearing. “Now, she sticks to a few pieces of high jewellery and repeats them.”
Case in point is her newfound love of Cartier’s Juste Un Clou necklace, worth £15,500 ($33,319), which she has worn on numerous occasions of late, including most recently for her sit-down interview with CBS, trailed on Thursday and airing on Sunday. In the clip, she’s seen wearing it with a mauve-coloured Ralph Lauren co-ord, as well as her Cartier Love Bracelet and Cartier Tank Watch.
Meghan’s Cartier Juste Un Clou necklace is the latest piece from the French high jewellery brand to be added to her collection. Designed to look like a nail wrapping around a neck, the sculptural design was first debuted in 1971, and, according to Cartier’s website, encapsulates “the bold spirit of the era.”
The Duchess was first spotted in the necklace at the Invictus Games in 2022, but has clearly rediscovered it in recent months, photographed wearing it on multiple occasions in July, including for the G9 Ventures Summit in the Hamptons, as well as during a lunch date to Tre Lune in Montecito with Father of the Bride actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley. The necklace is set with 57 diamonds totalling 0.2 carats.
Perhaps the most famous piece of jewellery in Meghan’s collection, she owns not one but two Cartier Tank Watches. The first she bought for herself during her days as an actress, when her TV series Suits was commissioned for a third season. At the time, she had it engraved with, “To MM from MM”. When she married Prince Harry, she reportedly was given the Tank that had belonged to his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, which he had inherited after her death. First made in 1996, fans of the watch love its timeless (no pun intended) appeal, not to mention its genderless design, with sword-shaped hands, Roman numeral hour markers and tank-like bracelet.
Although she has been known to take it off on some occasions – notably her engagement interview with the BBC - the Cartier Love Bracelet is one of the mainstays of Meghan’s wardrobe. One of Cartier’s most popular designs, it was first created in 1969 as a unisex handcuff, sitting tight around the wearer’s wrist. It comes with a special key, as the bracelet is locked into place, signifying everlasting love.
In an interesting quirk of history, the original Cartier Love Bracelet was gifted to celebrity couples of the day, with one of them being none other than the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, with whom Harry and Meghan are often compared. Alongside the Tank watch and her new Juste Un Clou necklace, it is one of Meghan’s three go-to Cartier pieces of “everyday” jewellery.
Meghan first started wearing another of her go-to bracelet stack - Lorraine Schwartz’s “Against Evil Eye” Five Diamond Pave Bracelet – at the end of last year and since then has worn it on upwards of ten occasions.
Featuring 23.66 cts blue topaz, 1.86 cts white diamonds and .06 cts black diamonds, the “evil eye” symbol is believed to ward off evil spirits and is a symbol of protection – no doubt something the duchess feels she needs from the paparazzi and tabloid press. It’s not the first piece of jewellery Meghan has from Schwartz, a favourite jeweller of A-listers - she has previously been spotted wearing her emerald-cut pinky ring.
The Duchess was clearly on something of a jewellery shopping spree in late 2023, as that is when she was also first spotted wearing the Imperial Disc Pendant Necklace by LA-based designer, Ariel Gordon. Featuring a long twisted rope chain and textured border, as well as sans serif engraving (you can have the style personalised too), it has a 1970s feel and works well when paired with the Duchess’s Cartier and Lorraine Schwartz pieces.
Jennifer Meyer is another LA-based designer who the Duchess has been spotted wearing countless pieces from since she moved back to California, notably her “mummy” necklace.
She wore this pair of on-trend hammered gold disc earrings for the premiere of the Bob Marley biopic in Jamaica in January, and also packed them for her and Prince Harry’s trip to Nigeria in May. Talking about her relationship with the royal, the designer has said: “I get really excited when I see her in our pieces - she just radiates amazing energy.”