Queen Camilla joined King Charles for a rare joint engagement in Bradford yesterday
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Queen Camilla wore one of her favourite brooches as she accompanied King Charles on a trip to Bradford yesterday. Celebrating the current UK City of Culture, the royal couple enjoyed a delightful day among locals, sharing hugs, laughs, and even a magic trick or two.
Their Majesties were welcomed to the new Bradford Live venue by the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracey Brabin, before greeting the gathered crowds, who waved the King and Queen in with flags ahead of a performance by local school children. Queen Camilla debuted a new look for the occasion, stepping out in an ice blue trench by one of her favourite designers, Anna Valentine.
The King and Queen watch a rehearsal by local school pupils at Bradford Live
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Something new and something blue for the Queen, then. As for something old, Camilla pinned to her lapel two of her most treasured brooches – a pair of dragonflies from her extensive personal collection of Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery. Made from diamond and sapphires set in white gold, the blue and grey dragonflies have been in Queen Camilla’s collection for over a decade.
Since her trip to Guernsey as Duchess of Cornwall in honour of the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Queen Camilla has often been seen wearing the dragonfly brooches, which are from the Libellule collection. In 2017, she wore them at Clarence House for the Launch of the Great Get Together. Over the years, she has built up quite the Van Cleef collection: among other pieces, she owns a malachite set of necklace and matching earrings, a pair of ‘Cosmos’ clip brooches (which she wore for her very first Buckingham Palace garden party in 2005) and enormous diamond drop earrings, which she wears for evening events. In 2018, at a state dinner in Ghana, she sported a necklace and earrings from the designer’s ‘Snowflake’ line.