top of page

Emma Chamberlain wore the historical choker at Met Gala 2022.

















The young YouTuber was wearing the diamond choker lent by the French jewelry house, Cartier. American YouTuber Emma Chamberlain has seen wearing the jewelry that once belonged to Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala on her red carpet attire at the 2022 Met Gala. The choker got the attention of each and everyone present at the Met Gala.

The choker actually belonged to the Maharaja of Patiala Bhupinder Singh and was made in 1928 after the King of Punjab decided to turn his De Beers diamond, the seventh-largest in the world, into an heirloom choker.

The necklace become recognized as the Patiala necklace and is made of 5 rows of platinum chains adorned with 2,930 diamonds and a few Burmese rubies. The royal Patiala had approached Cartier to design their gemstones and diamonds in the choker as it is widely seen these days. The actual weight of the choker was more than a thousand carats and at its center was the 234.6 carats De Beers diamond with yellow centers, equally the size of a golf ball and the seventh-largest diamond in the world.

The Patiala necklace project was no longer proving financially attractive to Cartier, as the Maharaja usually provided as much of his own gems as possible. But it adorned Cartier's picture in the West. When Jacques Cartier visited India and inspected the startling collections of gemstones of Indian rulers, he gifted the West which was unseen jewelry. When Cartier presented Maharaja Bhupinder Singh's jewelry collection at an exhibition on 13 Rue de la Paix, people from around the world visited to see the jewelry. In 1948, the necklace was counted as missing from the Patiala Royal Treasury. After 34 years, the De Beers diamond mysteriously reappeared at a Sotheby's auction in 1982 without the necklace. It was valued at $3 million at the time. Sixteen years later, part of the necklace ended up in a small antique shop in London, the De Beers stone, and all the other large diamonds.

The necklace was later taken by Cartier, who replaced the missing stones with replicas. They say that if the Patiala necklace takes on its authentic form these days, it could really be worth at least $30 million. As the royal families believe in keeping their ancestor's ornaments and the fighting stuffs preserved as a souvenir.


Comments


bottom of page