Take Marilyn Monroe, for example. As the world marks what would have been her 100th birthday, an avalanche of images and photographs tied to her public persona is once again being re-shared, parsed and analysed. Most of them reinforce the familiar archetype of the blonde bombshell who taught generations of women about the transformative power of diamonds.

And yet there was another Marilyn Monroe — one that emerges through the objects and garments now appearing at auction at Heritage and Julien’s in the United States. This was the Marilyn who carried a chic metal minaudière clutch (offered at Julien’s), wore a demure black Dior suit (a similar style at a fraction of the price is here) and enjoyed telling the time from a Fabergé clock now offered for sale by Heritage.

Behind Marilyn Monroe’s glamorous image also lay a lifelong secret passion: she was an avid and surprisingly serious reader.

Growing up between foster homes and orphanages, Marilyn found both escape and self-education in books. Over time, she built a personal library of more than 400 volumes ranging from classic Russian novels to philosophy and poetry.

Her shelves included heavyweight authors such as Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Walt Whitman and Freud — you can find her reading list here.

In fact, Marilyn, who had dropped out of high school, later enrolled in literature classes at UCLA to continue her education. She was even photographed absorbed in Ulysses by James Joyce, a notoriously demanding novel.

Her love of reading remained constant throughout her life, revealing an intellectual curiosity and emotional depth that many of her admirers ignore.

Still on American soil, Christie’s New York is presenting A Treasured History: The Stream Family Collection, devoted to one of the great families of America’s Gilded Age. At its centre is Matilda Gray Stream, who took over the family oil business in the 1930s — at a time when very few women dared to lead major companies — and transformed it into a formidable enterprise. Yet despite her business acumen, she retained a deeply cultivated artistic sensibility and invested discerningly in Fabergé.

Not the famous imperial eggs, but rather the “other Fabergé”: the cigarette cases, clocks, desk objects and precious fantasy pieces through which the firm expressed some of its greatest creativity.

At Sotheby’s New York, meanwhile, the image of Catherine the Great comes into sharper focus through a remarkable group of diamond-set flower trimmings once worn on her gowns. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, whose possessions reveal an intimate inner world unknown to most, Catherine The Great used even the tiniest piece of her army of accoutrements to project imperial power. She was rarely seen without jewels, and her adornments extended far beyond traditional parures of necklaces, earrings and bracelets to include glittering ornaments sewn directly onto her garments.

During her reign from 1762 to 1796, Catherine sought to build a court capable of rivalling Versailles, using luxury — and above all diamonds — as an instrument of political theatre. In fact, she was largely responsible for the dramatic expansion of the Imperial jewellery collection, increasing its holdings by approximately 40 per cent.

Among the most refined expressions of this ambition were the small diamond-set floral trimmings pinned onto the fabric of court dresses, creating what contemporaries described as shimmering points of light across the Empress’s silhouette. Sotheby’s is offering three such pieces attributed to Louis David Duval of Geneva, one of Catherine’s principal jewellers. Formed as ribbon-tied flowers set with old-cut diamonds mounted in silver, they are exquisite examples of late 18th-century court jewellery.

When not worn, such jewels were reportedly kept in Catherine’s celebrated “Brilliant Room” in the Winter Palace — a former imperial bedchamber transformed into a private sanctuary for her diamonds.

The sale also includes an earlier and larger ornament dating from the reign of Catherine’s predecessor, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Set with diamonds and Ceylon sapphires arranged as sprays of wheat and cornflowers, it offers a rare glimpse into the opulent decorative language of the Russian court before Catherine’s reign.

Another major highlight is a rare Imperial Fabergé diamond and aquamarine necklace dating from the reign of Nicholas II. The necklace was presented by the Imperial Cabinet in 1911 to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna as a proposed diplomatic gift for the visit of German Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and Crown Princess Cecilie to St Petersburg.

Bathed in the sort of sunshine London enjoys only for a handful of days each year, this season’s jewellery auctions seem to sparkle with even greater intensity.

At Christie’s, Cartier’s celebrated menagerie takes centre stage with a parade of jewelled creatures ranging from its iconic panthers to a highly unusual zebra bangle and an exuberant elephant-shaped creation. They are joined by a seductive line-up of Bulgari Serpenti bangles whose sinuous forms remain as irresistible as ever.

Bonhams, for its part, is bringing together an elegant selection of historically significant and highly collectible jewels, including a Cartier sautoir once owned by legendary soprano Dame Nellie Melba, an impressive Kashmir sapphire ring and a Boucheron tiara created in 1924 for Mary Ethel Burns, Viscountess Harcourt, an American-born aristocrat and devoted Boucheron client who commissioned a number of remarkable jewels throughout her life. The tiara was conceived as a wedding gift for Mary Ethel’s daughter, Doris Harcourt.

This marks the first time the tiara has been publicly seen since it was created more than a century ago. Inspired by classical antiquity, its graduated olive-leaf motifs symbolise peace, hope and prosperity.

Over at Sotheby’s, one of the standout offerings is an Art Deco Cartier collection formerly owned by model Phyllis Frank, alongside a spectacular pair of antique girandole earrings so theatrical and ornate they seem to belong to the vanished world of Marie Antoinette’s court.

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What was I thinking about? The concept of self.

And it all started with a selfie — not mine — taken by a 13-year-old girl during the First World War, considered the first teenage selfie in history.

While researching the Romanovs, I stumbled upon a series of self-photographs the family had taken — early specimens of what we now call selfies. One image stopped me in my tracks: Anastasia Romanova, aged 13, in a white high-collared shirt and long skirt, kneeling upright on a chair placed in front of a mirror with a Kodak Brownie box camera gripped in both hands, its base steadied against the back of the chair. And that face — a mixture of fear, surprise, smug pride and the disbelief of someone unsure whether what they are doing is actually going to work.

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Here’s a taste of The Mosaics:

The photograph was accompanied by a letter dated 28th October 1914, addressed to her father, Tsar Nicholas II:

“I took this picture of myself looking at the mirror. It was very hard as my hands were trembling.”

From there I went through other mirror selfies the family had taken, because they were all obsessed with photography — collectively creating a living reportage of their days, particularly in the final ones. What those images show, with painful clarity, is a family living in almost complete isolation, utterly unable to grasp the chaos mounting all around them.

Which made me think of Frida Kahlo — confined to her bed while recovering from an accident, surrounded by mirrors her mother had installed above her, and so she began painting herself.

She wrote: “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.” Kahlo produced 64 self-portraits in total, each one a record of personal isolation — its pain and its particular strength.

The word selfie — a compression of self-portrait — is new, popularised by smartphones with front-facing cameras. The word selfie is new but the impulse behind it is ancient.

Around 1353–1336 BC, the Egyptian sculptor Bek, first chief royal sculptor under Akhenaten, is believed to have sculpted both himself and his wife Taheret. The first selfie, it turns out, was a couple selfie.

In the early 1400s, Jan van Eyck inaugurated a tradition of artists inserting themselves into scenes depicting other subjects. The most famous example is the Arnolfini Portrait: in the convex mirror reflected on the back wall of the room where Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini and his wife stand, a figure raises his hand in greeting — believed to be van Eyck himself.

Raphael placed himself in The School of Athens (1509–11), standing beside Ptolemy as the great minds of Ancient Greece — Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Heraclitus, Socrates — convene around him. And Michelangelo, in The Last Judgment (1536–41) in the Sistine Chapel, left behind a record of his own exhaustion: he painted himself as a flayed, deflated skin held in the hand of Saint Bartholomew.

In the 17th century, Diego Velázquez inserted himself into Las Meninas (1656) in the very act of painting it — a work that deliberately collapses the boundary between real space and depicted space, between the painter and the painting.

But art is only the visual expression of a question that philosophy has been asking since Socrates told us to know thyself, basing his entire method on relentless self-examination. Plato, whose writings are the reason we know Socrates at all — since Socrates left nothing written — argued that the self consists of two distinct parts: a physical, decaying body, and an immortal, rational soul that exists in an ideal realm before being trapped in matter. It is the application of Plato’s whole philosophy, that dichotomy between reality and ideas, to the question of identity. And it is no coincidence that Plato’s notion of an immortal inner self became the silent foundation for the Christian religions that arrived centuries later, promising eternal life to those who lived by their principles.

Leonardo da Vinci, who produced remarkably little art for someone considered one of its greatest practitioners, was in fact far more occupied with war machines, timekeeping mechanisms, anatomy, and the structure of the universe. Among his many obsessions was the question of where, precisely, the self resides within the body. For Leonardo, each human being was a “cosmography of the minor world” — a microcosm mirroring the universe. In his anatomical dissections, he sought to physically locate the soul. He concluded it lived in the senso comune, the common sense, a region at the centre of the brain where all sensory impressions were synthesised and interpreted.

It was perhaps Leonardo’s systematic dissection of the body that laid the ground for Sigmund Freud’s compartmentalisation of the self in his seminal 1923 work, The Ego and the Id. For Freud, the self is not unified but perpetually in tension: the instinctive Id, which seeks immediate pleasure; the rational Ego, which negotiates with reality; and the moral Superego, which internalises society’s rules, its guilt, its ideals.

Freud’s work deeply influenced Jacques Lacan, one of my favourite thinkers — in part because his approach to psychoanalysis was shaped by linguistics, a passion of mine. Lacan understood the human psyche not as a unified entity but as a fractured structure, profoundly shaped by language, symbols, and illusion. He organised human experience into three registers: the Imaginary (the realm of surface images and illusions), the Symbolic (the realm of language, social laws, culture — which acts as a filter on the Imaginary), and the Real (the raw, unspeakable reality that exists beyond language and cannot be fully symbolised).

At the centre of Lacan’s theory of self is the mirror stage, which occurs in infants between six and eighteen months. This is the moment a child first recognises their reflection and perceives themselves, for the first time, as a whole, singular entity. They identify with that image. They form their first sense of I. But Lacan insists this unified self is a profound illusion — because the external image is far more stable, far more coherent, than the child’s actual, uncoordinated inner reality. Since the child’s identity is founded on something outside themselves — a reflection — the human ego is, by its very nature, alienated. We learn to see ourselves through something that is not us.

Which brings me to our generation of selfies, and to what I think of as the multiple mirror stages of our life.

In the past, having a portrait painted — or simply having access to a mirror, the luxury of examining your own face — was a privilege. Now it is a daily ritual that has produced a new phase in which we never stop trying to recognise ourselves.

We pass through many mirror stages, and they tend to deepen during certain periods more than others. We drift from childhood into our early teens without much thought for the image we project, and then, around 13, the scrutiny begins: the length of a nose, the colour of the skin, a new spot. It becomes a daily preoccupation — until, in my experience, we have children, and suddenly forget our own physical presence entirely, absorbed in someone else’s life. And then the children grow up, and we find ourselves staring at the mirror again, wondering why the face looking back is not quite the one we remember from before.

That is where I am now. A mirror stage – or an identity crisis, perhaps, the very thought that has been preoccupying my mind and making me forget a few things :)

What mirror stage are you currently going through?

If you’d like to know more about the last Imperial family of Russia, these are my favourite books on the Romanovs. And since summer has finally arrived, if you happen to read outdoors, do not forget sunscreen — this is the one I currently swear by. A hat, too, as my mother always says, is essential in summer, particularly in the city. I love structured styles like this very elegant white straw pillbox hat or this other classic style which is perfect for the weekend. And of course hats are the perfect excuse for brooches: at the moment I am eyeing this beautiful and very affordable one in luminous turquoise and this one wonderful one by Chanel on Vestiaire Collective, where you can get 20% off if you are new to the platform and use this discount code REF9FL4-NR7E).

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These were the words Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi, wrote in her diary.

Few royal women in history have been as obsessed with beauty as the Austrian empress, whose legendary appearance became both her instrument of power and her prison.

Interestingly, her obsession began only after she married the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz-Joseph, in 1854 at the age of 16, who was 6 years her senior.

In order to preserve her beauty as long as possible, she submitted herself to rituals that were so extreme that bordered on self-torture. From the accounts of others, we learn that her tricks, most of which would not meet today’s health and safety standards, seemed to have worked, although Sisi avoided photographers after the age of 40, by covering herself with a veil or a fan, or turning to the opposite direction as soon as she spotted one.

Beauty was Empress Sisi’s main occupation throughout her day, to which she devoted many hours.

In this article, I am going to examine her haircare practice, her skincare regimen, and her body training, and finally, I am going to unveil 3 shocking secrets about the empress, one of which was a source of deep chagrin for her doting husband, who was otherwise completely besotted with her.

Before we delve into the research and Sisi’s more disturbing beauty practices, I must say: she would have adored living in our era, with its endless beauty treatments and astonishingly advanced plastic surgery. She would not have had to live in constant fear of the sun while sojourning in Madeira or Corfu; she could simply have applied a generous layer of this marvellous SPF100 and refreshed it throughout the day with this cooling SPF50 mist. I often wonder what she would have thought of TFC8 in this revitalising cream and serum (I personally swear by), and she could certainly have simplified her famously exhausting haircare routine had she discovered this magical hair oil.

Why Was Sisi So Obsessed With Beauty?

Empress Sisi was born in Munich on December 24, 1837, and grew up far from the rigid atmosphere of imperial courts. Much of her childhood was spent at Possenhofen Castle on the shores of Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, where she enjoyed an unusually free and informal upbringing.

Her father, Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria, was a bohemian aristocrat who loved music and nature far more than court etiquette. Instead of being raised through strict academic lessons and ceremonial discipline, Sisi spent her days riding horses, hiking in the mountains, and exploring forests, developing a deep attachment to animals and the natural world.

This carefree and unconventional childhood shaped her lifelong love of freedom, travel and physical activity, but it also left her profoundly unprepared for the suffocating rituals of the Viennese court she entered after marrying Emperor Franz Joseph I at just 16 years old.

It was there that beauty gradually became both her armour and her weapon, a way to ingratiate herself with a court and an empire in which she never truly felt at home. Beauty was also for Sisi a way to escape society and court commitments.

Haircare: “I Am A Slave To My Hair”

Sisi’s chestnut hair reached almost to her ankles and was considered one of the marvels of Europe. Thick, heavy and slightly wavy, it required around three hours of maintenance every single day.

The sheer weight of her hair caused migraines so severe that she sometimes wrapped ribbons around her head to reduce the pressure. Eventually, she admitted in despair: “I am a slave to my hair.”

But maintenance was of paramount importance.

Every morning, after a cold bath, a massage, and a light breakfast, the empress would sit before her trusted hairdresser, Fanny Feifalik, as her hair was transformed into elaborate braided hairstyles, decorated with tiaras or her famous diamond stars.

The process became almost sacred. Sisi forbade anyone except Fanny from touching her hair and would sometimes cancel official engagements if her hairdresser was unavailable.

Her obsession became so severe that fallen hairs had to be collected and shown to her in a silver bowl. Terrified of upsetting the empress, Fanny secretly hid loose strands beneath adhesive tape sewn inside her apron so she could present Sisi with an apparently empty comb.

Every three weeks, her hair underwent an even more exhausting ritual: it was washed with raw eggs and cognac in a process that lasted an entire day, including drying. Afterwards, Sisi would walk for hours wearing a waterproof silk dressing gown while her hair dried naturally in the wind.

Ironically, those endless hairdressing sessions also became moments of intellectual discipline. While Fanny worked, Sisi studied Greek and Hungarian — skills that later helped strengthen her relationship with Hungary within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Skincare: Vinegar, Strawberries, and Raw Meat

Sisi’s beauty obsession extended far beyond hair.

Every evening she took warm olive oil baths to soften her skin, while during the day she sprayed her face with floral mists made from rose petals, lavender or violet vinegar.

Her skincare recipes sound astonishingly modern at times. She used honey and crushed strawberries as a natural exfoliating mask and applied egg-white mixtures to tighten and brighten her complexion.

Other treatments were far more disturbing.

The most disturbing of Sisi’s beauty secrets, including the scandal that shocked Emperor Franz Joseph, are behind the paywall.

Here’s a taste of The Mosaics:

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No, it was not the chance of a private audience with the Blackpink or Cristiano Ronaldo.

It was the release of a watch. Specifically, a collaboration between Swatch, king of pop-coloured watches for the masses, priced under $500, and Audemars Piguet, maker of watches that begin at $25,000 and quickly climb into the stratosphere from there.

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Collaborations between high luxury and the mass market have been around for some time — Swatch itself pi…

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And honestly, I understand it. The eggs are the greatest jewellery story ever told — imperial patronage, revolutionary destruction, miraculous survival, and record-breaking prices at auction dominating headlines for days. They have everything.

But they are not the whole of Fabergé.

In fact, they may not even be the best way to understand Fabergé.

Lusting after some Fabergé in your life?

Before delving into the details of the Christie’s auction and my highlights of “The Other Fabergé” here’s a selection of some essential Fabergé pieces:

An egg-shaped pend…

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I had just landed from Geneva after attending Watches & Wonders, my head still processing the complications and daydreaming about Bulgari’s reproduction of Elizabeth Taylor’s Serpenti watch.

Yet at 8am, I found myself in a sprawling industrial building that looked as though it had been constructed for storage purposes during wartime rationing, with bricks in whatever colour happened to be available, and that smelled as though it had not been opened since Armistice Day.

My 12-year-old took no notice of the predicament written across my face and hurried to join the sixty-something furious children armed with egg-pan-shaped rackets, bouncing tiny white balls across the ta…

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Otherwise known as that peculiar time of year when celebrating other people’s love stories, soon to be sealed with eternal vows, brings about the first whispers of marriage within your own relationship.

A proposal, naturally, that no woman in her right mind should ever accept without tangible, material proof of commitment. Which comes, of course, in the form of a ring.

And this is the point when certainties shatter and questions arise:

And so, the question is: how do you buy an engagement ring?

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And yet, for all this commentary, one question remains conspicuously unaddressed: what Swift deliberately chose to leave out—namely, one of the most defining chapters of Elizabeth Taylor’s life, and why.

To understand that omission, one must look at Taylor’s life through its most powerful signifiers: her jewellery. She often described it as her greatest passion, and it is no coincidence that she effectively told her own life through the pieces she collected in My Love Affair with Jewellery.

If you are more curious about Elizabeth Taylor’s watch collection nobody talks about go straight here:

This is precisely what I want to set right.

In this piece, I trace the most significant jewels in Taylor’s collection—some referenced in Swift’s video—and consider, just as importantly, those that are missing.

Let’s begin.

From The Pearls of Mrs Wilding To The Mega Jewels Mike Todd Gave His Queen

The first pieces of jewellery we see in Taylor Swift’s video—where film scenes and archival footage are carefully stitched together to mirror the lyrics—are a pair of pearl earrings worn by Elizabeth Taylor as a bride in Father of the Bride (1950).

They echo the pearls that reappear later in the video, as Taylor marries English actor Michael Wilding, her second husband and the father of her two sons, Michael and Christopher. On that occasion, she wears pearl earrings and a matching necklace—an understated choice that reflects an earlier phase of her life, before the grand, statement jewels that would come to define her image.

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And yet, her fascination with jewellery began much earlier. In My Love Affair with Jewellery, Taylor recalls being “12 or 13” when she first developed an interest in it. Determined to buy her mother a pin for Mother’s Day, she saved diligently, negotiated the price, and finally secured it. Her father, an art dealer in Beverly Hills, praised her instinct: “You have such good taste, Elizabeth.” He was right. That early purchase marked the beginning of what would become one of the most extraordinary private jewellery collections in history.

The true turning point, however, came with her third husband, Mike Todd—one of the great loves of her life, who remained by her side for 413 days before his tragic death in a plane crash. That their relationship would be defined by extraordinary jewels was clear from the outset. Todd proposed with a 29.4-carat emerald-cut diamond, which Taylor jokingly nicknamed “my ice-skating rink.”

She later recounted that, while visiting the Soviet Union, a guide remarked: “No offence, madame, but I think a diamond like that should belong to a museum where everyone can see it.” Taylor disagreed. More people, she replied, were able to see it on her finger.

Before we delve into the depth of Elizabeth Taylor’s collection to answer Taylor Swift’s video, a few notes on how to channel her diva spirit: rubies are essential—try a modern version like this one, or this gorgeous synthetic one by Amina Muaddi that doesn’t break the bank (less than $500). Add a pair of chandelier earrings (there are beautiful options under $150), and, for the finishing touch, a tiara—or, more realistically, an embellished headband that captures the same sense of drama.

The 19^th Century Tiara That Solved Taylor’s Bad Hair Day

Legend has it that one day Elizabeth Taylor was in tears because her hair refused to behave. Even divas, it seems, are not immune to the indignity of a bad hair day. Not everyone, however, solves the problem the way she did—or rather, the way Mike Todd did.

Seeing her distress, Todd rushed out and returned with a 19^th century Fleur de Lis decorated diamond tiara—one capable, as the story goes, of taming even the most rebellious hair. As Taylor later recalled in her autobiography, he told her: “You are my queen, and I think you should have a tiara.”

Taylor writes that she first wore the tiara to the Academy Awards in March 1957, where Todd’s film Around the World in 80 Days won Best Picture. In reality, she had already debuted it the night before the Golden Globes, at a party at Coconut Grove on February 28. On that occasion, she paired it with a pair of girandole chandelier earrings she had noticed near Place Vendôme—costume pieces that Todd promptly bought for her.

But Todd, it seems, was not content to see his queen in paste, and prepared a little surprise. As Taylor recounts:

“A couple of months later we were back in New York, and I went to put on those earrings. They were in a different box, but I didn’t give it much thought. I opened the box, and the earrings looked all polished up, and I put them on. But there was something different about how they fit. And I said, ‘Mike, there’s something wrong with my earrings. They’re not quite the same?’
Well, he just chuckled, and told me he had taken the paste ones and had them made up with real diamonds!”

Taylor wore the tiara again on March 27, 1957, on Oscar night, and once more a few months later at the Cannes Film Festival—each appearance reinforcing the image Todd had so instinctively understood: not just a star, but a queen.

The Cartier Ruby Parure

In Taylor Swift’s video, we see Elizabeth Taylor several times wearing one of the most significant—and most passionate—gifts she ever received from Mike Todd: the Cartier ruby parure, recently exhibited in London as part of the Cartier exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Comprising a necklace, bracelet and earrings set with velvety red rubies and diamonds, it was undoubtedly one of Taylor’s most treasured jewels. She wore it repeatedly throughout her life—perhaps because it remained forever tied to what she would later describe as a “perfect summer day” and a “perfect day of love.”

She recounts the moment in My Love Affair with Jewellery:

“Mike gave me the rubies when I was pregnant with Liza. We had rented a villa… about three months into our marriage. The most beautiful house you’ve ever seen… I was in the pool, swimming laps, and Mike came outside to keep me company. I got out of the pool and put my arms around him, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, don’t joggle your tiara.’ Because I was wearing my tiara in the pool!

He was holding a red leather box, and inside was a ruby necklace, which glittered in the warm light. It was like the sun, lit up and made of red fire. First, Mike put it around my neck and smiled. Then he bent down and put matching earrings on me. Next came the bracelet. Since there was no mirror, I had to look in the water. The jewellery was so glorious, rippling red and blue like a painting. I just shrieked with joy… It was a perfect summer day and a perfect day of love.”

The Krupp Diamond

In Taylor Swift’s video, we catch glimpses of the 1968 film Boom!, in which Elizabeth Taylor starred alongside Richard Burton. The film also features one of the most controversial jewels of her collection: the Krupp Diamond, which Burton purchased for her that same year. This is the only instance in which Taylor Swift references Richard Burton, one of Elizabeth Taylor’s greatest loves — a chapter that is otherwise completely omitted.

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The past couple of weeks have been intensely busy. I travelled to Geneva for Watches & Wonders — as many of you saw here — while simultaneously researching and writing several stories in between bad coffee and rather too much chocolate. I would never change it. I am driven by a profound gratitude that I have made a profession out of what has fascinated me since childhood: words.

I think I must have loved words from the first moment I encountered one without fully understanding it. I remain fascinated by how these dry symbols, placed side by side, can transport us to faraway places, to eras we never lived through, into the minds of people real or imaginary — until we feel, in our own stomachs, the pain they felt.

Like most writers, I read widely and try to push myself beyond my usual interests. But naturally I have my preferences, and I tend to gravitate towards the classics.

Which is why what happened this month feels rather unusual.

Not only did I read a contemporary author …

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But Catherine (this was her new name Ekaterina — Catherine in English—Alexeievna since converting from German Lutheranism to the Russian Orthodox Church) would become very good at identifying weakness and using it to her advantage — and even better at understanding how power works.

When she arrived in Russia as a teenage bride for the future Peter III, she quickly grasped that power at the Russian court was not simply inherited. It had to be earned.

A voracious reader of Enlightenment philosophers, she corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot. Catherine became convinced that her intellectual capabilities were far superior to those of her husband, who was becoming increasingly unpopular in the first months of his reign. Moreover, her inferior husband also had a penchant for flings — all of this, she thought, had to be stopped for the sake of her self-respect and the wellbeing of Russia.

So, in the summer of 1762, Catherine orchestrated a coup with the support of powerful guards regiments and allies that included her lover, Grigory Orlov.

Peter was forced to abdicate on 9 July 1762 (Old Style calendar) and died eight days later, on 17 July, under circumstances that remain deeply suspicious. Officially, his death was attributed to “haemorrhoidal colic” — nobody ever believed that.

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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

But before we dive into the research behind how Catherine transformed herself from German-born usurper into God’s chosen ruler of Russia, you may be curious how to dress like an Empress in 2026 — the kind of look that commands attention and suggests nobody should dare cross you. A tiara is, of course, essential. But there’s no need to bankrupt yourself: the modern, far more wearable equivalent is an embellished headband. It keeps your hair impeccably in place while still sitting imperiously atop your head. A few options could be this pearl or this silk & crystal piece (both under $300) or a regal burgundy Gucci and a dazzling pieceby Simone Rocha (under $800) But If sky is the limit, this showstopper is for you

Catherine had acted this way also because she had learned that her husband Peter III was planning to divorce her to marry his lover Elizaveta Vorontsova, so it was not only a power move but also a matter of survival.

And what now? She had seized the throne, yes, but how do you transform a German-born usurper into God’s chosen ruler of Russia?

With a crown.

And, having understood the importance and holiness linked to the regalia, Catherine knew she needed one quickly.

Her coronation was scheduled for 22 September 1762 in Moscow, leaving roughly two months to create an object powerful enough to project legitimacy and permanence.

So Catherine commissioned what would become the single most important jewel of the Romanov dynasty: the Great Imperial Crown.

The project was entrusted primarily to Swiss-born court jeweller Jérémie Pauzié (also written Posier), who had previously worked for Empress Elizabeth. He collaborated with jeweller Georg Friedrich Eckart, who would later create the imperial orb in 1784.

Pauzié later described how he selected some of the largest diamonds and coloured stones from the imperial treasury — gems considered too large or unfashionable for contemporary jewellery settings — and transformed them into something entirely unprecedented.

The result was staggering.

The crown contained:

• nearly 5,000 diamonds

• 75 large pearls

• a monumental red spinel weighing nearly 400 carats

• silver structural elements

• gold detailing

The enormous red spinel mounted beneath the cross deserves special attention.

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And while I was looking at watches and thinking about watches, the question that kept arriving in my Instagram DMs and on WhatsApp throughout the week was: “Milena, if I had to buy one watch, which one should it be?”

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So this article is my answer to the most frequently asked question of the past week. Except that I cannot answer it by choosing just one watch. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that a woman should own—or at least have access to (through a partner, a friend,…

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This is Watches & Wonders in Geneva: the unmissable event for anyone who loves timepieces.

What follows is my very personal collection of moments from a fair that, as …

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All the details about Elizabeth Taylor’s jewellery are here:

But no one talks about the watches.

And yet, Elizabeth Taylor assembled a remarkable collection of timepieces—a fact laden with irony, given that she was famously late throughout her life. So much so that she even requested her own funeral begin fifteen minutes behind schedule.

Knowing Taylor’s attitude towards time, and looking at the pieces she chose, it is likely that her watches were selected primarily for their aesthetic qualities — more for presence than precision.

An Eye for Beauty

Born in London in 1932 to American art dealers, Taylor inherited a sensitivity to beautiful objects early on. When her family relocated to Los Angeles during the Second World War and her film career accelerated — from National Velvet onwards — she developed an instinct that would shape her collection. She negotiated jewellery into contracts. She wore pieces in publicity stills. Jewellery was part of her myth. And watches would follow the same logic. They were rarely about timekeeping.

Before we delve into the depth of Elizabeth Taylor’s watch collection, a few notes on how to channel her diva spirit with watches: a golden Piaget watch like this one is essential or even this , or a more affordable Panthère Cartier, and of course you would also need the drama of a Bvlgari Serpenti watch either full power like this or more restrained like this.

The Bulgari Watches Taylor Turned Into Icons

A pivotal moment in Elizabeth Taylor life came in 1962, during the filming of Cleopatra in Rome.

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The two I’ve been thinking about most recently here at Watches & Wonders in Geneva are grammar and watches.

Keep reading. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds—but if you prefer, you can simply look at the beautiful watches 🙂

Before I could read the time on a watch, I was already fascinated by languages—their sounds, their alphabets, and how people could go about their lives, think, speak, and dream using words that were foreign to me. Ev…

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The Princess wore a high-necked, long-sleeved gown of antique Brussels lace and silk taffeta, designed by Helen Rose at MGM, which offered the dress in exchange for filming rights to the ceremony, which was watched by over 30 million people worldwide. The wedding gown was extraordinary and became a reference for many brides after her including the gown made for the Princess of Wales. Kelly’s gown comprised ten separate pieces, some 400 metres of fabric, and a train extending three metres. More than 30 seamstresses are said to have worked on it for over 6 weeks.

But what truly shocked everyone was not the dress, but something that was surprisingly not in sight:

Grace Kelly wore no tiara.

Instead, in keeping with Monegasque tradition, Princess Grace chose a Juliet cap of lace, seed pearls and orange blossom, securing a sheer veil that showed her famous angelic features. Her only jewellery was a pair of pearl earrings, the same she had worn a year earlier when she accepted her Oscar for The Country Girl — it was perhaps her “something old” for her wedding day.

But the fact that Grace Kelly wore almost no jewellery at such a high-profile ceremony—watched by millions—does not mean she lacked a taste for sparkle. Quite the contrary.

Over time, she assembled one of the most refined royal jewellery collections of the 20th century, centred largely on creations by Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier.

The contrast is particularly striking when looking at the celebrations surrounding the wedding. On the evening before the religious ceremony, at a gala held at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Grace appeared in full regal splendour. She wore a Cartier ruby and diamond tiara (also known as Bains de Mer tiara), composed of three detachable brooches—an exceptionally versatile piece gifted by the Société des Bains de Mer and which can also be worn as a necklace.

She paired it with a Cartier diamond necklace, created in 1953 and offered by Prince Rainier as an engagement gift. Designed as a modern festoon, it featured rows of brilliant- and baguette-cut diamonds arranged in a fluid, three-strand composition.

Around her wrist, she wore a diamond bracelet by Van Cleef & Arpels, a wedding gift from Monaco’s National Council.

Grace Kelly also wore her Cartier diamond festoon necklace paired with a diamond swag tiara —whose maker is unknown— in a series of official portraits shown here below.

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But before we dive into the research behind Grace Kelly’s jewellery, you may be wondering how to achieve her ultra-elegant look: a pearl necklace is, of course, de rigueur — like this one by Charlotte Chesnais, or this more minimalist but very chic — and pearl earrings too, like these classic ones (less than $200) or these sculptural ones. And of course we would need a tailored dress, this is so 100% Grace Kelly.

The Story Of Grace Kelly’s 2 Engagement Rings

Before the wedding, there was the meeting that changed everything—and led to not one, but 2 engagement rings.

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Little boys and girls, eight to twelve years old, polished shoes, neatly combed hair, biting their lips and shifting from foot to foot, trying to suppress the urge to talk, laugh, or simply run around.

One by one, they stood up, walked to the piano and played, delivering various degrees of accomplished performances. But nobody in the audience was a music critic expecting Lang Lang to play, so the comments were usually enthusiastic. “Very good.” “What a talented little boy.” “That was great.” “She’s so talented—and so pretty.” “So pretty, and so talented.”

Pretty.

Why did this word appear only as an addendum, and only for the girls?

I heard it again when the recital ended and parents and relatives gathered. A grandmother stroked a girl’s hair: “So you’re not only very pretty, but very talented.” A mother, patting her daughter’s shoulder: “My pretty girl—how talented you are. I’m so proud of you.”

Pretty.

Now, the word began to truly irritate me.

And as I tried to tell myself: what could possibly be wrong with a compliment? I realised that there was a lot wrong with that compliment in that context.

We were at a piano recital, a setting meant to celebrate discipline, effort, the hours children put into practice. And still, for the girls, a comment about beauty slipped in, as if talent alone were not quite sufficient.

The truth is that I recognised the word immediately. I had grown up with it.
At piano recitals, in Italy, it was never quite about what I played.
What people seemed to notice most was what I wore, how I looked—whether I was “pretty.” A word that, I believe, can do real damage.

The Damage of “Pretty”

A compliment about appearance, in a context that has nothing to do with appearance, is distracting. It is misplaced. And, more importantly, it can be harmful, because it suggests—and quite powerfully although subtly—that for a girl, being talented is not enough.

Most of these compliments are delivered when girls are young, when beauty is easy and effortless. But what happens when that “pretty” of childhood fades?

When adolescence arrives bringing acne, braces, awkwardness.

What happens when the word is no longer heard?

It is not difficult to imagine the outcome. A girl—no longer effortlessly “pretty,” not yet fully a woman—becomes acutely self-aware. She begins to scrutinise her reflection: her nose too large, her lips not full enough, her body not quite right.

And from there, the slope is predictably familiar.

At twenty, she searches for ways to fix herself: fillers, procedures, injections, botox—even without a wrinkle in sight—because she learns that youth must be preserved, that beauty must be maintained.

So that casual “pretty” may turn a little girl into believing that her looks will always matter, regardless of any effort she puts into any other endeavour.

And she learns, in short, that she is never quite enough without beauty.

What We Praise Shapes What We Become

But that word “pretty”—something a girl is often simply born with—describing a static, for many unchangeable, condition, reminded me of the work of Carol Dweck, who in her book “The Growth Mindset” observed that boys and girls are often praised differently, which ultimately shapes what they will become.

Girls are praised for being something: good, clever, pretty. Boys are praised for doing something: trying, improving, achieving.

In this distinction is the crux of the matter.

Praising fixed qualities fosters a fixed mindset, one that ties identity to traits that cannot easily be changed. Praising effort fosters a growth mindset, one that encourages resilience, ambition, and the belief that improvement is possible.

When we tell a girl she is pretty, we are not encouraging her to become, we are judging something she was born with, something she did not necessarily “work on” to achieve, and, crucially, we are encouraging her to remain in that “state of beauty” as long as possible, because we taught her that it is important.

The Sad Irony Of Women Teaching Girls to Be Less Than Enough

What struck me most at the recital was not just the word itself—but who was using it.

Women.

Women who, in every other sphere, argue—rightly—that they want to be judged for their intelligence, their work, their ideas. Women who fight to be paid as equally as men. Women who want to be treated with the same respect as men.

And yet, in that room, those women were passing on a different message to the next generation, that appearance matters, regardless of the context. The very women who will later complain about being judged for their appearance teaching their daughters to accept it.

It is a contradiction so ingrained we barely notice it.

It reminded me of Jane Austen’s famous observation in Pride and Prejudice:

“A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages… and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner…”

More than two centuries later, one wonders: how much has really changed?

Is it really 2026?

The Beauty Myth, Rehearsed Early

By casually inserting “pretty” into moments of achievement, we reinforce the importance of physical appearance, and by doing that we may, we women, trap the next generation in a cycle of self-consciousness and sometimes self-hatred.

It begins early, when a little girl hears that word thrown here and there, mostly in the most inappropriate contexts. It is a small signal, but started young and repeated, it can be absorbed and fully internalised.

Choosing Our Words More Carefully

Of course, appearance matters. We all form first impressions. To deny it would be naïve. But that is precisely why we must be careful.

Because words direct attention, assign value, and tell us, subtly but persistently, what matters.

I am not suggesting we stop complimenting beauty altogether.

But perhaps we should ask: is it relevant?

And more importantly: what are we reinforcing when we use it?

Because a casual “pretty,” repeated often enough, does something far more significant than we intend.

It teaches a girl that no matter what she achieves, she must also be beautiful. And that, without it, she might not be enough.

But a girl should not have to be pretty to be praised. And she certainly should not have to be pretty to be enough.

So, can we please stop telling little girls they are pretty?

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And yet, for all their commanding presence in Russian mythology, Fabergé’s Easter eggs are not a Russian invention at all.

But before tracing their origins, it is worth asking a more fundamental question:
Why are eggs associated with Easter in the first place?

Eggs as symbols of rebirth (and the Immaculate Conception), their place in Orthodox tradition, and the emergence of bejewelled eggs in Western aristocratic circles.

To answer this question, we must travel to Milan, in Italy, to the Pinacoteca di Brera, and stand before the Montefeltro Altarpiece (c. 1472–1474) by Piero della Francesca. In that painting, also known as the Madonna and Child with Saints, a single ostrich egg hangs suspended from the ceiling of an apse above the Madonna’s head. It is not a decorative detail but a powerful representation of two central tenets of Christian theology: the Immaculate Conception — the belief that Mary gave birth to Christ without original sin, that is, without sexual intercourse (this interpretation is, strictly speaking, Catholic, as defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854) — and the Resurrection of Christ, life enclosed within a sealed shell that inevitably breaks into being.

The association, however, predates Christianity . In traditional agricultural societies, spring marked the rebirth of the earth itself: when animals gave birth, when the first crops emerged, and when the community’s survival for another year became visible. The abundance of new food was, logically and inevitably, associated with life returning. Across ancient Egyptian, Persian, and Zoroastrian traditions, eggs were exchanged at the spring new year as tokens of fertility and renewal. Christianity absorbed and recast these existing symbols — as it did with so many seasonal rituals — and invested the egg’s natural logic of concealed life with its theological meaning.

Where Western Christianity tends to weight Christmas as its central popular celebration, Eastern Orthodoxy reserves its “feast of feasts” for Easter. The midnight liturgy, the procession, the triple cry of Khristos Voskrese — Christ is risen — and the response Voistinu Voskrese — Truly He is risen — represent the spiritual climax of the Orthodox Easter celebration.

The custom of exchanging red-dyed eggs at Easter in Russia is ancient. The red colour symbolises the blood of Christ, while the egg stands for Jesus’s Resurrection. From peasant households to the imperial court, eggs were blessed and exchanged.

But in Western aristocratic circles, another tradition took root as early as the 18th century: the gifting of gem-set eggs. A gilded and enamelled egg containing the model of a hen — which in turn held a replica of the Imperial Crown and a precious ruby ring — was kept in the Green Vault treasury in Dresden and was certainly known to Peter Carl Fabergé, who, aged 14, was sent to Dresden to attend the Handelsschule and frequently visited the Grünes Gewölbe. Other examples of bejewelled eggs, kept in the treasuries of Rosenborg Castle in Denmark and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, would have served as prototypes for Fabergé’s First Hen Egg of 1885.

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Here are 5 of Schiaparelli’s business lessons. And the one mistake that brought down her little empire.

1. Network with your clients before you start your business

We all carry the same romantic idea of the entrepreneur: staring out of the window, sketching plans on paper, raising funds, building a product and then — finally — finding someone to sell it to. If the sequence feels logical, it is also, more often than not, completely wrong.

And to th…

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As the light lingers longer, I’m opening the door a little wider: I’m offering 20% off The Mosaics until April 15.

Thank you for being here, for reading, and for your continued support.

Going forward, The Mosaics will offer two articles per week:
— Monday: a piece dedicated to a jewel, a watch, or a collector, explored through in-depth historical research or cultural commentary on luxury
— Friday: essays on personal experiences and reflections, or considered shopping advice

If this resonates, consider subscribing:

THE MOSAICS by Milena L.M.A.

THE MOSAICS By Milena Lazazzera-Martins A. LUXURY IN CONTEXT, curated with expertise and taste.

A subscription allows you to participate through comments and gives you access to masterclasses and private consulting with me.

It costs less than your matcha latte and offers something far more lasting.

Here are some of the stories you won’t find anywhere else:

Why Do We Celebrate International Women’s Day https://milenalazazzera.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/189568593?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fpublished

Fabergé & the Ship of Theseus https://milenalazazzera.subst…

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Barbara’s mother died when she was a child. She grew up surrounded by wealth but starved of affection and stability, which she searched for through 7 marriages (including one with Cary Grant) and jewels.

By the time she died alone in her suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles in 1979, aged 66, much had been written about the tragedy of her life, her seven husbands, the death of her only son, her solitude — the moniker “poor little rich girl” stuck with her since her extravagant birthday party in the middle of the 1930s recession — but her collection of jewellery, usually only praised for its exorbitant value, also gives a glimpse into her inner soul.

Her first great lesson in jewellery: Cartier

Barbara’s relationship with jewellery began early and seriously in 1929. Her father sought to persuade her to accompany him to Europe by offering her a jewel of her choice and took her to Cartier. Trays of ruby rings were brought out for inspection. She chose the finest stone in stock — a ruby ring that cost $50,000, ten times what her father had intended to spend. Her father paid that anyway, comforted by his daughter’s fine eye.

It was only the beginning of Barbara’s lifelong passion for collecting jewellery. And although the first gem she chose was a ruby, another gem was soon to conquer her heart.

But before we dive into the research behind Barbara Hutton’s obsession with green and her vast jewellery collection, here are a few pieces inspired by her taste—at prices that won’t require her staggering inheritance: a chic Art Deco Chanel brooch for less than $800, a pair of Dior earrings for less than $300 or these more minimalist ones by Givenchy My full Barbara Hutton-inspired “A Touch Of Green” selection is here.

The Obsession With Jade & The Colour Green

Before she began collecting jade with intention, Barbara had already developed a marked affinity for the colour green. Contemporary accounts — particularly those in Barbara Hutton: A Candid Biography by Dean Jennings — note how often she wore it.

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