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Award season, the Met Gala, and two rounds of Paris Couture Week produced a genuinely wide range of jewellery this year, from small diamond studs at one end to an 85-piece house codes collection at the other.
Sapphires, spinels, opals and coloured diamonds turned up across nearly every major event this year, frequently as the centrepiece of a look, not a supporting detail.
At Paris Haute Couture Week in January, Dior’s Soleil Céleste set paired yellow diamonds with stars and moons cut from black opal doublets, referencing Christian Dior’s own fascination with the divinatory arts. That set was part of Dior’s wider Belle Dior collection, whose standout solitaire was a ring centred on a 6.5-carat cushion-cut pink spinel that opens into a flower shape.
Chaumet’s aigrette tiara, part of its new Envol collection, combined white diamonds with grand feu enamel wings, echoing a 1910 design; elsewhere in the same collection, a companion necklace carried the colour, its cushion-cut Madagascan sapphire detachable as a standalone brooch. By the July couture shows, Chanel had placed a 20.66-carat octagonal sapphire at the top of its Imprimé Lion necklace from Signes & Symboles, set above the house’s diamond-encrusted lion motif.
Red carpets followed the same pull toward colour. Chase Infiniti wore rubellite and pearl tassel earrings from LAGOS at the NAACP Image Awards, then closed out award season at the Oscars in a De Beers London choker centred on a 9.06-carat fancy intense yellow diamond, paired with fancy vivid yellow pear-shaped earrings and additional diamonds totalling more than 57 carats.
Bulgari picked the same night to introduce its new Eclettica high jewellery line, with ambassador Priyanka Chopra wearing the collection’s Serpenti Illusio necklace. A 14.01-carat antique cushion-cut sapphire from Madagascar sat at its centre, ringed by pavé diamonds, emerald accents and touches of onyx, the work of roughly 1,300 hours across 235 individual elements.
Jessie Buckley and Kate Hudson both wore desert diamonds, warm-toned natural stones prized for their yellow, orange and pink hues, at the Actor Awards earlier in the season.
For its June launch, Van Cleef & Arpels made colour the foundation of Fascinating Egypt, using gemstones as a defining thread throughout the collection. Sapphires, emeralds and turquoise carried the collection’s roughly 180 pieces, four years of work distilled into pieces like the Muse Éternelle clip, which rendered Cleopatra in white and yellow gold set with diamonds.
Heritage did as much work this year as anything new. Several of the year’s most talked about pieces weren’t new commissions; they were reworked, reissued or borrowed directly from a house’s own history.
That same aigrette tiara from Chaumet was itself built around a 1910 wing design once belonging to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, converting in three ways after more than 850 hours of work. De Beers relaunched its Talisman collection, first introduced in 2005, with new pieces in July, including an 18-karat gold cuff set with roughly 11 carats of diamonds. Boucheron built its January collection around its own founder, pulling from the house’s very first Question Mark necklace for its central reference point, with one piece, The Untamed, representing roughly 2,600 hours of work in diamonds, rock crystal and white gold.
Chanel also drew on its own history for Signes & Symboles in July, threading all 85 pieces through four emblems tied to Gabrielle Chanel personally: the lion that echoed her astrological sign, the camellia, the star and the sun.
The instinct carried onto red carpets, where pieces pulled straight from a house or family archive did much of the work. The Princess of Wales wore heirloom Cartier Greville chandelier earrings, a design the house created between 1918 and 1929, to the BAFTAs.
At the Oscars, Kate Hawley’s Best Costume Design win for Frankenstein came with three vintage Tiffany & Co. pieces on her cape: Jean Schlumberger designs pulled from the archive, among them a 1969 sunburst brooch in platinum, gold and coloured diamonds, alongside two floral pieces made between roughly 1965 and 1970.
Felicity Jones’s gown was styled with two pieces from the 1920s, a pearl and diamond bracelet and an antique diamond and pearl bow ring, both in platinum. March’s Actor Awards saw a similar pull toward the past, with several guests reaching for pieces already decades old rather than anything newly made.
Pearls were never the loudest material of the year, but they recurred across enough different wearers and events to register as a genuine pattern.
Chase Infiniti’s rubellite and pearl tassel earrings at the NAACP Image Awards were an early sign of it. At the Oscars, Teyana Taylor’s Chanel gown was embroidered with glass pearls and crystals, worn alongside a platinum necklace set with a diamond weighing more than 18 carats. Shaboozey went furthest with the material, pairing Mikimoto pearl and diamond earrings with a full pearl tassel necklace worn at his waist, styled to look like a sash or watch chain, a detail multiple outlets singled out as one of the night’s most talked about styling choices.
Fine watches stopped functioning as a separate category from jewellery this year and started showing up as part of the same styling conversation.
Cocktail watches were a recurring feature across award season generally, alongside brooches and white metal pieces. At the Oscars specifically, Shaboozey paired a diamond-set Chopard L’Heure du Diamant watch in 18-karat white gold with his pearl pieces, treating it as part of one coordinated look rather than a separate accessory. Zendaya presented Best Director alongside Robert Pattinson, wearing a diamond-set Rolex, paired with Cindy Chao The Art Jewel’s diamond branch earrings, which totalled 30.22 carats, and a matching ring.
Classic white diamonds had a genuinely strong year too, even while colour and archival pieces made headlines elsewhere. Anne Hathaway kept things quieter at the Met Gala in May, pairing her hand-painted Michael Kors gown with a single Bulgari Vimini necklace in yellow gold set with pavé diamonds.
Hailey Bieber’s Grammys look in February was a custom Lorraine Schwartz silver choker centred on a 30-carat pear-shaped diamond, paired with a 20-carat pear-shaped pair of studs and a 12-carat ring – more than 60 carats in total and one of the single biggest jewellery moments of the season.
Teyana Taylor’s Oscars necklace carried its own 18-carat diamond before her diamond earrings, totalling over 12 carats, and two further diamond rings rounded out the look. Van Cleef & Arpels found room for its own showpiece diamond within Fascinating Egypt: the Déesse ailée Mystérieuse necklace, one of the collection’s most technically ambitious transformable pieces, centres on a 14.05-carat pear-shaped diamond that can be unclipped and worn separately as a ring.
The year’s actual shape was additive. Colour and archival referencing gave red carpets and runways more material to draw from, and diamond-heavy looks kept showing up all year alongside them, from February’s Grammys through to the Oscars in March.
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