Chinese President en Mevrouw Xi Jinping toegekomen voor staatsdiner in het kasteel te Laken. pic.twitter.com/8D9E2zIUgH
— Belgian Royal Palace (@MonarchieBe) March 31, 2014The Belgians hosted a state visit from China. To the state banquet, Queen Mathilde wore a repeated blue Natan gown and the bandeau from the Nine Provinces Tiara.
This isn't even an April Fools' Day joke: Belgium actually held a tiara event! It's been a looooong time. They haven't had a full scale state visit complete with state banquet for quite a while - government problems will do that to you (minor details, ahem). But Mathilde's bringing it back in a big way, essentially repeating the successful look and color combination from her first official portrait as queen but swapping in the similarly colored gown she wore in Luxembourg in 2012. That portrait was my best of the year for her in 2013, and just donning a tiara at home at all automatically puts this appearance in the running for this year's bests. Deeelightful. Click here for a video (which also shows Princess Astrid, the king's sister, in her tiara.) Click here for a gallery.
Mathilde was pure elegance at the welcome ceremony as well, click here for that - and thank the Shoe Gods she gave us some interest instead of going with natural instinct for more solid blue!
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| Princess Astrid (wearing the Savoy-Aosta Tiara) and Queen Mathilde at the banquet; Mathilde's tiara plus the gown's previous appearance and those official portraits |
Photos: Deradactie/Xinhua/Reuters/Getty/Monarchie Belge
