For Kate Middleton’s second royal engagement of 2025, she wore a meaningful piece of jewelry: The Princess of Wales chose to wear a pair of pearl earrings that belonged to the late Queen Elizabeth. She paired them with a five-strand pearl necklace, believed to be by the jeweler Susan Caplan.
This isn’t Kate’s first time wearing jewels that belonged to the late Queen, but it was for a particularly poignant occasion: Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
For royals, pearls are intertwined with mourning—symbolism that dates back to Queen Victoria’s reign. After her husband Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria often wore pearls. Kate wearing pearls today, then, could be a meaningful way to signal with her jewels that she is commemorating the millions lost in the Holocaust.
The Prince and Princess of Wales attended a ceremony hosted by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Before the ceremony, the royals met with Holocaust survivors, including Stephen Frank and Yvonne Bernstein. Kate had previously photographed both Frank and Bernstein with their families in 2020, and today was a reunion of sorts for them. “It was such a treat for me to come and see an old friend,” she said.
“Whilst I have been lucky enough to meet two of the now very few survivors, I recognize not everyone in the future will be able to hear these stories first hand,’’ Kate said at the time. “It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations, so that what they went through will never be forgotten.’’
