Who Gets to Wear the Patiala Necklace?

Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala — the fourth-largest city in Punjab, India today — was, according to many accounts, a complicated man. He helped establish cricket in India and supported the arts, but he also had five wives, 350 concubines, and 44 Rolls Royces. Namely, he lived a life of excess far removed from his subjects. He also made history in 1925 when he gave Cartier the 234-carat De Beers diamond (the seventh largest in the world), 2,930 other diamonds, and Burmese rubies to create the most expensive necklace the French luxury house had ever made. Some estimate the necklace would be worth as much as $2.3 billion today.

Then, in 1948, the necklace mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again in its original form. In the decades since, the five-layered piece has become a symbol of both India’s former wealth as well as the problematic control Western museums and luxury brands have over pieces of subcontinental history. In 2022, this manifested when YouTuber Emma Chamberlain, a Cartier ambassador, wore the necklace’s choker component to the Met Gala, which quickly led to backlash. Most recently, the brand denied Diljit Dosanjh — a pop star who is also Punjabi and Sikh, just like Singh was — access to the necklace, leaving onlookers flabbergasted.