LIZ JONES: Don’t ATTACK Princess Catherine for wearing £25 Zara earrings. She has no need of priceless bling – that dazzling smile is quite enough for the rest of us!

What’s that mantra we should all live by? Something about glass houses and not throwing stones?

Well, yesterday, the sound of shattering glass was deafening.

Suzy Menkes, formerly of the International Herald Tribune, latterly of Vogue online – a woman who is old enough to know better and really should rethink her hair do – saw fit to lob a missile at Catherine. 

‘She doesn’t have Camilla’s joy,’ said 79-year-old Menkes in a podcast.

‘The Princess of Wales is a bit of a disappointment about jewellery. She gives the impression that she only puts it on when she absolutely has to.’

Queen Mary, great grandmother to King Charles, was famous for her love of expensive jewellery

Princess Catherine is more than happy to wear expensive jewellery for state occasions. She is pictured in the Lover’s Knot tiara and Queen Alexandra’s wedding necklace

An expensively jewelled Kate at a State Banquet in November

Kate took a very different approach with schoolchildren in Pakistan in 2019 – choosing £7.50 beaded chandelier earrings from Zeen

 Well, yes! That is Catherine’s modus operandi, and one of the reasons we love her.

The Princess of Wales sparks joy whenever she makes a public appearance not just for her impeccable wardrobe, make-up and demeanour, but with her diplomatic use of jewellery.

She realises she is not Queen Mary, or even Queen Elizabeth II (who by the way gave Menkes her OBE, a nice bit of bling I’m sure Menkes only removes in the bath). 

Times have changed, belts have been tightened. Yes, of course Kate wore the four-strand pearl choker with a diamond clasp and the Bahrain pearl earrings for the Queen’s funeral. 

But on anything other than a State occasion, Kate will choose something modest, even high street. 

She knows that the ordinary people she spends 99 per cent of her time meeting at close quarters will be dazzled sufficiently by her smile, with no need of priceless bling. 

She is attainable, touchable – which is what we love about her.

Even for her first Christmas walk as the Princess of Wales, Catherine wore a pair of Sezane earrings, a gift from William costing just £100. 

She chose the brand again for Ascot last month. Catherine puts meaning before a price tag. When she was given a pair of £25 earrings by a mother who had not long lost her teenage daughter to suicide, Kate continued to wear them for her more intimate meetings with other mums. 

Kate will honour Diana by wearing her jewellery at important events: the pearl and diamond earrings for the Coronation, for example.

Or the three-strand diamond necklace, given to the late Queen by her father, King George, in 1950. 

Catherine’s choices are about feeling the warmth from the women who went before her on her own skin. 

Kate was happy to wear Diana’s engagement ring exactly as it was. (Meghan, in contrast, seemed unhappy with the ring that Harry had carefully designed – and set about ‘upgrading’ it).

Kate’s dazzling smile is quite enough, says Liz Jones. Here she wears £5 metal earrings from Accessorize

Kate’s Accessorize earrings in detail. They are not the sort of thing that Queen Mary would have worn

Kate was happy to accept the gift of Diana’s engagement ring as it was. She did not seek to alter or improve it

Kate ensures the provenance of every jewel is impeccable; she will never make the mistake of wearing ‘blood’ diamonds.

Suzy Menkes seems not to have the word ‘playful’ in her lexicon. But that’s the word the rest of us had in mind when Catherine arrived at the BAFTAs wearing not just an Alexander McQueen gown we had seen before, updated with opera gloves, but a pair of chandelier earrings from Zara costing 25 quid. 

Could Kate have joked with the stars and pinched William’s bottom at the BAFTAs had she been toiling under the weight of jewels made heavy by history? 

I very much doubt it.