Royal jewellery craze that’s frightfully common!

When it comes to signposting your ability to procreate, there are many trends that annoy me. There’s constantly cradling your baby bump, or sticking a pink notice on the rear window of your car that shouts ‘Baby on Board’.

I also cringe at the craze, particularly seen among footballers’ wives, for having black-and-white photos of your toddlers blown up to billboard size on every wall, or hosting an elaborate birthday bash for your one-year-old, even though it has no clue it has lived for a whole year.

Now I’m sad to report there is another compulsion among mums: wearing your children’s initials on your jewellery.

Why, I ask, do they feel the need? Do they fear they might forget their darlings’ names without a sparkly prompt winking on their wrist? Or perhaps it is just born of the desire to remind the world of their little prince or princess’s existence.

Liz Jones claims the trend for using bejewelled lettering to signal you have tied the knot or procreated is the upmarket equivalent of getting a tattoo. Pictured: Princess Beatrice’s necklace

Of course, sometimes the child in question is a prince or princess. Some of the chief offenders among the initials-bearing brigade are the Royal Family.

This week, Princess Beatrice appeared wearing a chain with the initials ‘W’, ‘E’ and ‘S’ — for stepson Wolfie, husband Edoardo and daughter Sienna — dangling from her neck like some sort of really short story. She is taking after her mother, Fergie, who has a Eugenie and Beatrice bangle, worn most recently to Eugenie’s wedding.

Sophie Wessex has also worn her children and husband’s initials around her neck, and even the Duchess of Cambridge is not immune: she has a necklace with a gold disc bearing the letters G, C and L, and three little stars. Awww.

Meghan began her precious game of children Scrabble with a discreet little ‘A’ but has since expanded her collection from initials to birth signs, with necklaces featuring diamond patterns of her children’s constellations.

Oh, and she has lots of H&M jewellery, too. And by that I don’t mean she bought it from the High Street store. No, her H and M charms came into being during the very early days of her relationship with Harry.

To me, this trend for using bejewelled lettering to signal you have tied the knot or procreated is the upmarket equivalent of getting a tattoo.

My mum had seven children, so she was always forgetting our names. We always brought home the school photo contact sheet but none was ever ordered. They were too expensive!

For the first five years of my life, I was just ‘the little girl’. Yet my most vivid memory of my mum is that she always served herself last at dinner, saying she wasn’t that hungry. There was never enough food to go around. That is a mother’s love: being totally selfless. Silly symbols were unnecessary.

Liz said Beatrice is taking after her mother, Fergie (pictured left), who has a Eugenie and Beatrice bangle (pictured right), worn most recently to Eugenie’s wedding

And if the royal mothers want an example to follow of how to show meaning and emotion through jewellery, then they have the perfect blueprint staring them in the face: the Queen herself.

When Her Majesty wore the sapphire chrysanthemum brooch she first wore on her honeymoon for her most recent Christmas message, it signified her love for her late husband in a way that made shows of initials seem pale.

Hers was a more private way of remembering someone. To me, that makes it all the more intimate and all the more genuine.

SPELLING BEA

While the delicate gold chain Beatrice wore this week bearing the initials of her family may be bespoke, a similar one-letter gold vermeil necklace by Completed Works is sold by Net-a-Porter for £125.

KATE’S CUTIES

Kate owns two necklaces by British designer Daniella Draper paying tribute to her children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and little Prince Louis.

Her gold Midnight Moon disc, shown off in January 2020 and costing £1,050, has the children’s initials engraved on it. She has also displayed the brand’s £495 ‘Fixed Alphabet’ necklace, again with the kids’ initials on it.

Meghan (pictured), who began her precious game of children Scrabble with a discreet little ‘A’ has since expanded her collection from initials to birth signs

In February 2014, we saw Kate’s first personalised necklace, a disc by Merci Maman which bore her firstborn child’s full name — George Alexander Louis — and a heart inscribed with the letter W for her husband. It is believed the £89 necklace was bought as a gift following George’s birth by her sister Pippa.

In September 2020, Kate wore another gold necklace, from Irish brand All The Falling Stars, with the letters ‘G, L, C’. It was so popular that the firm was inundated with requests and is still feeling the bounce of it today.

MARKLE SPARKLE

For her 40th birthday in 2021, the Duchess of Sussex wore two gold necklaces from LA-based jeweller Logan Hollowell, featuring diamond patterns of her children’s birth sign constellations: Gemini for Lilibet and Taurus for Archie. Each cost around £1,200.

Pictured: Meghan’s discreet ‘A’ necklace

In June 2020, she sported two Suetables necklaces. One featured the symbol for Taurus, her son Archie’s May birth sign; another had Virgo emblazoned on it to mark Harry’s September birthday. They cost less than £100.

In July 2019, she wore a gold bangle featuring Archie and Lili’s names on it from Jessica Meyer, costing £773.20. She also wore a necklace with a delicate letter ‘A’ to Wimbledon. The ‘Love Letters’ necklace was by Verse Fine Jewellery and cost £384.

Meghan’s first piece of monogramming was in December 2016, when she was seen with a necklace bearing the initials H and M. Further ‘H&M’ jewellery was shown off in September 2019 — a £430 double Mini Mini Jewels dog tag necklace adorned with her and Harry’s initials.

CUFF FOR FERGIE

At her daughter Eugenie’s wedding in October 2018, Sarah Ferguson wore a bespoke cuff bracelet with both her daughters’ names spelled out in white stones, and bordered in gold. The Duchess of York was first spotted wearing it in 2004.

WESSEX WAY

In January last year, the Countess of Wessex wore an initial necklace that had an ‘E’ for her husband, an ‘L’ for her daughter Lady Louise Windsor and a ‘J’ for her son James, Viscount Severn. The diamond letter charms, from Felt, cost £88 each.