A season of wars, worker strikes, and messy politics barely made headlines at the 2024 Academy Awards, where branding outnumbered protests and jeweled ornaments far outnumbered truce pins. exceeded. The most traditional awards ceremony has returned to its roots as a glorified trade event (it began 96 years ago as a way to appease top talent in the wake of union organizing, and has since found a foothold in the film world). The praise was close at hand. It's universal for a return to old Hollywood glamour.
In the early days of the Oscars, studios tightly controlled the image of their talent, directing their glamour, grooming them, and fashioning them. Of course, the actors long ago stopped being contract players and became independent agents. So no one can blame them for diversifying their plentiful source of income from celebrities.
As we know and accept, stars are now free to promote just about anything, wear gorgeous free costumes at award shows, and even make themselves beautiful if they so choose. You can even turn it into rentable billboard space. So it's notable, if not surprising, that this year's male stars have suddenly proliferated wearing baubles more associated with grandma's jewelry box than Hollywood heartthrobs. did.
I mean, brooches were everywhere. They were pinned to the chests of Cillian Murphy, Teo Yu, Ke Hui Quan, Robert Downey Jr., Tatanka Means, Mark Ruffalo and Jeffrey Wright. They were stylishly pinned to a Colman Domingo bow tie. As at the beginning of the Iron Age, it was used functionally to fasten clothing. But the Celts of BC did not have the technology to make brooches like the diamond-studded brooch that Simu Liu used to fasten his Fendi jacket.
“Almost every actor was wearing some kind of jewelry,” said Town & Country editor-in-chief Stellan Volandes, approvingly. your appearance. “
Style watchers were quick to call it a trend, perhaps forgetting that Jared Leto, Kevin Hart, and Timothée Chalamet arrived at the trend before them, and Liberace was the first.
Each of those men was big and bold, and so were the men wearing the brooches of this moment. It was a far cry from the chaste pearl-encrusted circle pins of the 1960s, the countless pin-on curiosities sold on eBay. What's more, he is one of the jeweled barnacle discs worn by European royalty. Nor were they good luck charms or heirlooms. That is, unless the actor's ancestor happened to be named Tiffany, Cartier, or Boucheron.
“Men's brooches are versatile and can instantly personalize and accentuate a person's outfit,” says the Hong Kong jewelry brand that designed the brooch Mr. Murphy wore to win his Oscar. , Bertrand Mack, Sovereign's chief creative officer, said in an email. And the punctuation mark was highlighted by the effect Mr. Domingo achieved when he pinned a jeweled David Yuman sunburst to his bow tie. The brooch was like a bold exclamation point on his high-wattage smile. It was also a clever gesture that paid homage to Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most famous designers of recent brooch fans.
Mack said the brooch “evokes an emotion not only in the viewer but also in the wearer.”
Perhaps those feelings also include a passionate urge to own it. Or so you might think, considering how eagerly jewelry companies are currently digging through their archives to capitalize on a newfound preference among men for the kinds of jewelry that women discarded long ago. not. (“I have a brooch phobia,” Volandes said.)
But some of the most famous jewelry is the brooch, including French jeweler Jean Schlumberger's “Bird on a Rock” design, which was introduced in 1965 and quickly became a hobby. It was purchased by American socialite and heiress Bunny Mellon. In prehistoric times of gender understanding, it was understood and accepted that brooches were jewelry worn only by women.
“You'd never see Mr. Mellon wearing Bird on the Rock,” said Verdura Jewelry President Nico Landrigan, referring to Ms. Mellon's philanthropist husband. But that was back then, and in recent years Tiffany & Co. has successfully pivoted to marketing Schlumberger jewelry for men, with this one appearing on the chests of Jeremy Allen White, Michael B. Jordan, and Jay-Z. She has been seen wearing jewelry.
“This Tiffany brooch is really on the market,” writes one observant jewelry blogger.
Of course, historically men were the biggest consumers of jewelry, and it's easy to see why: they controlled most of the wealth. That is now changing, and so is the idea that one gender has a monopoly on being the object of the gaze. Like their female counterparts, male celebrities at the Oscars are used to having their wardrobes inspected item by item when commentators take to the microphone.
And like other women in the industry, they're rapidly learning how to monetize their style. “Wearing black tie obviously allows you to play with a neutral canvas,” Landrigan says. Would you like to add a pin?
