PASADENA, CALIF. — Fantastic floral floats. Spirited marching bands. But this wasn’t just another Tournament of Roses Parade. This past New Year’s Day, there was something different. Glinting in the sunlight along the famed Colorado Boulevard, something lustrous this way came. For the first time since the parade’s commencement in 1890, the crown perched atop the Rose Queen’s head and the tiaras of the six Rose Princesses featured a girl’s other best friend: Mikimoto pearls!

The originator of the cultured pearl, Mikimoto has been a household name in the jewelry world for the past century. So when the Tournament of Roses selected Mikimoto to create new head wear for its Royal Court, the company turned to Amy Kim-Araneo, director of design and product development for Mikimoto (America) & Co., to fashion a handmade crown fit for a Rose Queen. Weighing in at more than a pound and valued at $100,000, it features 10 white South Sea cultured pearls and 632 Akoya cultured pearls. In addition to Mikimoto’s signature pearls, the crown is adorned with diamonds — 6.09 carats to be exact. And of course, what crown would be complete without an original design? Overlapping swirls and a flow of graduated-sized pearls create a three-dimensional ribbon effect. This graceful motif is further accented with a heart-shaped theme signifying love.

Kim-Araneo, who lives and works in New York City, demonstrates how the pearls move on one of her necklace designs at the Beverly Hills Mikimoto store.

“I like three dimensional pieces,” says Kim-Araneo, who collaborated with a team in Japan to design the final product. “The pearls go under and over so there’s a lot of dimension, and there’s also movement on some of the pearls. They dangle and they shake back and forth, so when the wind blows it can shake a little bit.”

And don’t discount the Royal Court’s tiaras just because they’re a bit smaller and lighter. Each of the six tiaras — worth $45,000 each — are made with 1.44 carats of diamonds, and 194 white South Sea and Akoya cultured pearls.

But seeing as how the crown and tiaras are specifically designed to be used by the Tournament of Roses for the next five years, wouldn’t it make sense to incorporate a rose in the design? Kim-Araneo thought so at first. One of her earlier sketches featured the Tournament of Roses logo on one side of the crown, decorated with rubies and emeralds. But the Tournament committee wanted something different.

“I think they had a lot of elaborate pieces with rose vines going around and big rose petals in the past,” says Kim-Araneo. “They were like, ‘No more roses!’ They wanted something cleaner.”

Including the back and forth between Japan and the United States, and having the designs OK’d by the Tournament of Roses committee, Kim-Araneo estimates that the collaborative process — from designing to putting on the finishing touches on the crown and tiaras — took more than 10 weeks of labor. It appeared to be worth the wait.
“I’d heard of Mikimoto, and I’d read about them, so I was excited,” says 2005 Rose Queen Ashley Moreno. “When I first saw my crown, I started crying. We were in the middle of a make-up session, and I had to get my make-up done all over again.”