Kate Middleton's Fake Pearls
When the Duchess of Cambridge wore a
delicate pair of imitation diamond-and-pearl earrings to the Diamond
Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral earlier this year, she could not
have anticipated the chain of events she would set in motion.
The
£48 fake pearl and cubic zirconia earrings were instantly familiar to
Belinda Hadden who was at home watching the TV coverage.
They were part of a range of jewellery sold on her website Heavenly
Necklaces — an online business selling convincing, understated fake
jewels which Belinda used to describe as a ‘well-kept secret’.
But shortly after those earrings were
worn by Kate, her secret was out — and life hasn’t been quite the same
since. Belinda, 55, is no stranger to celebrity clients and the essence
of her cottage industry has been its polite, discreet service.
She
has smiled at photographs of Hollywood stars wearing her fake gems on
the red carpet — keen to look a million dollars, but not prepared to
insure against the loss or theft of real jewels worth a million dollars. One
client came to her after losing a real diamond earring on a beach in
Kenya. Not daring to tell her husband, she contacted Belinda, asking if
she had something similar. To this day, the woman’s husband remains
blissfully unaware that she is sporting fakes.
Having
kept her client list secret, Belinda was disconcerted when she received
an email from one customer, with a photograph attached to it of the
Duchess of Cambridge at the Jubilee, asking: ‘Could these by any chance
be the same earrings that I have?’
‘There was a problem with client confidentiality,’ says Belinda now.
‘So I emailed back saying “it’s possible”, because “no” would have been a lie, but “yes” a betrayal.’
She thought that would be the end of
it, but soon internet chatrooms and websites such as www.whatkate
wore.com, which catalogues everything that the Duchess wears, were abuzz
with news about where the Duchess had bought her earrings.
Then
the Mail picked up the story of the Duchess’s £48 earrings, followed by
newspapers and broadcasters across the world. Orders started rolling in
— from all over the world. Heavenly
Necklaces was swamped, selling out of the earrings almost instantly.
More than 400 orders were placed within 48 hours — as many as the
company might normally expect in a year. Belinda hurriedly set up a
waiting list to cope with demand. The
company generated a year’s worth of business in a matter of days, as
customers from the U.S. to Japan, disappointed at having to wait for up
to two months for ‘Kate’s earrings’, consoled themselves with shopping
from the rest of the catalogue. They bought everything from the cheapest
£16 stud earrings to a fake diamond necklace costing just over £2,000. But this extraordinary surge in
orders threatened to overwhelm the small company. Belinda’s bank,
viewing her sudden jump in income as ‘unusual activity’, froze her
account. ‘That,’ she says, with measured understatement, ‘was not
helpful.’ Eventually, the
problem was sorted out but the Duchess’s decision to wear the firm’s
earrings has utterly transformed the business. Belinda had to register
for VAT, to take on new staff to cope with the backlog of orders and the
website had to be redesigned to handle large amounts of internet
traffic and a vastly greater volume of orders than before. Belinda
is a grateful beneficiary of what has been dubbed ‘The Kate Effect’
which describes the phenomenon whereby when Kate wears a pair of shoes, a
high-street dress or a fascinator hat, sales sky-rocket. She
says: ‘Here was the future Queen of England wearing fake diamond
jewellery and everybody celebrated it. I think there’s a feeling that
anyone can look great on an unlimited budget but the people with real
style are those who can look good on a limited budget, particularly if
they do that combination, Topshop-Prada thing.
‘Those are certainly the people I admire . . . and the Duchess of Cambridge is the patron saint of that message.’
Anyone
searching for proof of the Duchess’s ability to mix high and low need
look no further than the £2,900 Kiki McDonough earrings she wore at the
BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards last Sunday night — a sharp
contrast to Belinda’s £48 pair. Six
months on, orders continue to flood in, and so do notes from other
retailers, congratulating Belinda and hoping that the Duchess’s magic
dust will fall on their own businesses. ‘I
had a message from someone who makes funky crutches — fabulously
colourful, floral things — joking “Congratulations on your success. If
you could now just persuade the Duchess to break a leg. . .”.’ Belinda’s
own lucky break came after nearly 20 years of hard work building
Heavenly Necklaces from a kitchen-table start-up to a business with a
global client base.
The
concept of fake jewellery became big in the Thirties when people went on
cruises, left their jewels in the bank and wore replicas onboard.
