The Cartier diamond engagement ring that Grace Kelly was presented with by Prince Rainier III of Monaco is legendary. It centres on a monumental 10.48 carat emerald-cut stone that, in the decades since, has inspired countless engagement rings – including versions belonging to Elizabeth Taylor, Beyoncé, Amal Clooney and Anne Hathaway. The part of the story that’s less well known? The fact that the famous diamond was not the first engagement ring Kelly received from her husband-to-be.
The star’s early life reads like a fairytale. By 22, she was already a Hollywood star, her chic and witty movie performances winning her millions of fans around the world. Fewer than five years later, in 1955, she met her very own Prince Charming, and in circumstances more akin to a rom-com than real life.
Kelly was in Cannes for the film festival that April to promote The Country Girl (1954), for which she had recently won a Best Actress Oscar. While in the South of France, she was invited to the Palace of Monaco for a photoshoot, and it was there that she met the prince. Months of long-distance correspondence followed, and that Christmas, he crossed the Atlantic to propose to Kelly at her family home in Philadelphia.
Prince Rainier presented Kelly with was an eternity band-style ring made up of alternating rubies and diamonds, a nod to the colours of Monaco’s flag. The piece is widely reported to have been made by Cartier.
It was a mere placeholder for the real thing, however. That same month, the bride-to-be started filming High Society (1956), her final movie before she got married and had to give up her acting career. In the movie, a Cole Porter-penned musical comedy version of The Philadelphia Story, Kelly plays wealthy socialite Tracy Lord, who must choose between three very different love interests.
Engaged to be married to the rich but dull George (played by John Lund), Lord wears a scene-stealing ring throughout the film, its central stone elegantly flanked by a pair of tapered baguettes. And this was no movie prop. It turned out to be the real deal, as presented to Kelly by Prince Rainier himself. “We have pictures of them peering in at the windows of the Cartier store on the Rue de la Paix [in Paris],” says Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s director of image, heritage and style. “I don’t know if they were already married or engaged, but perhaps they were choosing this ring.” He adds that the jeweller’s archive records the ring’s transfer from Paris to its store in Monaco.
However it made its way on to Kelly’s ring finger, the diamond ended up with a starring role on the big screen. In one scene, Bing Crosby, who plays Tracy’s ex-husband in the movie, jokes about its size. In another, Kelly’s character polishes the massive rock on a seat cushion, then lies back to admire it.
Straight after filming wrapped in Los Angeles, Kelly travelled to Monaco for her royal wedding. On 18 April 1956, she and Prince Rainier wed in a civil ceremony at the palace before an opulent religious ceremony the following day at Monaco’s Saint Nicholas Cathedral. MGM, which had been Kelly’s studio up until the point she was married, gifted her her wedding dress, designed by Oscar-winning costumer designer Helen Rose (she had also designed Elizabeth Taylor’s first wedding dress in 1950). The studio also made a film of the Monaco wedding, which was attended by real as well as Hollywood royalty, and watched by more than 30 million people around the world.
Kelly’s engagement ring turned out to be just one chapter in her lifelong relationship with Cartier. At a grand gala on the night of her civil ceremony, she wore one of her wedding gifts, a Cartier diamond festoon necklace featuring 64 brilliant and baguette-cut diamonds. “The length is very flattering. After all, the role of jewellery is to bring light to the face,” says Rainero. No wonder then that Princess Grace wore it up until her death in 1982 at the age of just 52, when she suffered a stroke while driving her car. The necklace is still worn today by the Monegasque royal family, including Grace’s granddaughter Charlotte Casiraghi, who wore the heirloom piece on her own wedding day in 2019.
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It is believed to have been jewellery aficionado Alfred Hitchcock who introduced Grace Kelly to Cartier in the first place. The director, who nicknamed her the “snow princess”, made three movies with Kelly and in their final movie together, To Catch A Thief (1955) – which incidentally was filmed on the French Riviera – she wore pieces from the brand’s Grain de Café collection.
Originally created in 1938 by Cartier creative director Jeanne Toussaint, who was inspired by the humble coffee bean and the booming café culture of the time, the collection was worn by the biggest stars of the 1950s, from Kelly to Audrey Hepburn, and has recently been relaunched for the 21st century. Princess Grace wore the necklace on the official stamp of Monaco following the birth of her daughter, Princess Caroline, and Caroline herself continues to wear the set today. After all, good jewellery is forever.
