Anniversary issue: Worldly tastes of Indian royalty

Through ambitious commissions, Indian royalty shaped how European maisons viewed luxury

19 Jan 2026

1911, Delhi Durbar. It was cause for celebration as King George V was crowned Emperor of India. All monarchs from the princely states were invited, and as they arrived at the royal pavilion, the contrast between the British sovereign and the Indian kings was unmistakable. The Maharajas’ visual abundance appeared as an antithesis to the Emperor’s restraint. Rather than seeing a simplistic binary, Jacques Cartier perceived the possibility of cross-continental collaboration. Among the French jeweller’s Indian clientele, the most emblematic was Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, remembered today for the Patiala Necklace. Commissioned in 1925, it was Cartier’s largest single order. Assembled from cut stones shipped from India (including the 234-carat De Beers diamond), the ornament among others of its time, is said to have influenced Cartier’s later Tutti Frutti collection. In the outrage surrounding the necklace’s absence at the 2025 Met Gala, what often goes unmentioned is the political context of its making: the volatility of post-war Punjab, British allyship with the Sikh ruler and an attempt to stabilise authority in turbulent times through visibility.

At the same Durbar, Indira Devi met the prince of Cooch Behar and later became its Maharani. During her rule as regent, she stabilised the state’s finances and advanced women’s education. Known for her elegance and modern ideas, the first Western-educated queen commissioned nearly a hundred experimental shoes from Salvatore Ferragamo, featuring elaborate embroidery, gemstones and sculptural platforms. The admiration was mutual. Ferragamo immortalised her foot-cast in his museum in Florence, and this long-standing relationship with India continues to surface in the maison’s collections today, including its colourful printed silk scarves.

The Durbar Hall of Jai Vilas Palace with F & C Osler chandeliers

Automobiles, too, partook in this theatre of excess. From Mysore to Alwar, Indian royals were smitten by the Rolls-Royce motor car, undertaking alterations such as ivory and gold inlays and modifying them for tiger hunting. This legacy finds contemporary homage in creations of the company like the Maharaja Phantom Drophead Coupe in Dubai, adorned with peacock emblems and emerald-green accents. India was fundamental to global luxury in the late 19th and the early 20th century, and for F & C Osler, their largest overseas market. Their most acclaimed commission was in the 1870s, when Maharaja Jayaji Rao Scindia of Gwalior ordered the world’s second-largest pair of chandeliers for the Jai Vilas Palace. The company’s eventual fall was triggered by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, when trade with India declined.

As European maisons celebrate these commissions as feats of aesthetic daring, in India, they remain part of a more complicated inheritance. Baroda’s afterlife, seen through Maharani Sita Devi, is perhaps the most telling example. After the state was dissolved and merged with independent India, Sita Devi and her husband, Pratap Singh Gaekwad, were deposed and left the country in 1951. Commissioned just a year before and composed entirely of jewels from the former kingdom, the Hindu Necklace by Van Cleef & Arpels reads as an elegy to a past that they could not return to. Today, while crafts such as meenakari and jadau continue to inspire jewellers abroad, the figures who enabled these exchanges often recede into obscurity. These objects remain as living proof of a moment when power rested in privileging beauty, the repercussions of which ripple across time, long after the kingdoms themselves have disappeared.