THE JEWEL THAT DISAPPEARED

The extraordinary story of Queen Nazli’s Van Cleef & Arpels necklace

On August 27, 2026, a piece of twentieth-century jewellery history disappeared from a museum in Vienna. During the exhibition GLANZSTÜCKE: Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewelry × Masterpieces from the MAK Collection, two thieves entered the Museum of Applied Arts, broke a display case and escaped with one of the exhibition’s most historically significant objects: a diamond necklace that once belonged to Queen Nazli of Egypt. The theft took place during opening hours and, according to Austrian authorities, the suspects fled after smashing the case. The necklace had previously been valued at around €3.7 million.

But the real story of this necklace began almost nine decades earlier.

In 1939, Van Cleef & Arpels was commissioned by the Egyptian royal family to create exceptional jewellery for the marriage of Princess Fawzia of Egypt to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then Crown Prince of Iran and later Shah of Persia. Among the pieces created for the occasion was a spectacular necklace for Fawzia’s mother, Queen Nazli. Today known as the Collerette, the piece is an extraordinary example of late Art Deco jewellery and of Van Cleef & Arpels’ mastery of diamonds and platinum.

The necklace contains 673 diamonds, combining brilliant-cut and baguette-cut stones. Its design is constructed around sweeping ribbons of diamonds that form a semi-circular draped motif, converging at the centre around seven radiating baguette diamonds and a central round stone. The composition is remarkably graphic: almost architectural in its symmetry, yet fluid in the way the diamond ribbons appear to move across the platinum structure. Van Cleef & Arpels itself describes the necklace as an emblematic example of the late-1930s fascination with white diamond jewellery.

Queen Nazli wore the necklace during the celebrations surrounding her daughter’s wedding, linking the object permanently to one of the most important royal marriages of the period. What makes the piece extraordinary, however, is not simply the number of diamonds or its craftsmanship. It is the biography attached to it.

After the Egyptian monarchy was overthrown, Nazli’s life changed dramatically. The royal family lost its political position and the queen eventually lived in exile in the United States. The necklace entered the art market decades later, appearing at Sotheby’s in New York in 1975. It was acquired by a private collector and then disappeared from public view for roughly forty years.

Its return was almost as remarkable as its disappearance.

In December 2015, the necklace resurfaced at Sotheby’s and sold for $4.28 million. The buyer was Van Cleef & Arpels itself, which brought the historic jewel back into its heritage collection. From that moment, the necklace was no longer simply an extraordinary jewel with a royal provenance. It became part of the maison’s own institutional history.

Van Cleef & Arpels has subsequently presented the necklace in exhibitions dedicated to its heritage. The maison’s archives identify it explicitly as the former property of Queen Nazli and document its creation in 1939. Its significance lies not only in the materials used, but in the relationship between design, craftsmanship, historical provenance and the culture of collecting.

That is what makes the recent theft particularly disturbing.

A museum object such as this cannot be reduced to the monetary value of its stones. If dismantled, the 673 diamonds could potentially become far more difficult to trace, while the historical identity of the necklace would effectively disappear. The value of the object lies precisely in its being one object, with one history, one provenance and one unmistakable design.

This is also why the theft raises a broader question about the meaning of collecting itself. In a market increasingly fascinated by provenance, rarity and historical narratives, objects such as the Collerette demonstrate that value is not simply contained within materials. It accumulates through time.

The necklace survived the collapse of a monarchy, exile, the international auction market and decades away from public view. It was eventually recovered by the very maison that created it, exhibited again and returned to the cultural conversation.

Now it has disappeared once more.

For the moment, its whereabouts remain unknown, while Austrian authorities continue their investigation. What is certain is that the object has entered another chapter in its extraordinary biography, one that reminds us that the most important pieces in a collection are rarely valuable for only one reason.

Sometimes the greatest value of an object is the story that cannot be replaced.