Elle Fanning & the
1903 Cartier Wisteria Necklace

We will begin where any serious student of jewelry must begin this evening: with Elle Fanning, a Givenchy gown by Sarah Burton, and a Cartier necklace that predates the Art Deco movement entirely. The piece is a circa-1903 Paris creation crafted in platinum and set with round old-cut diamonds in a millegrain setting — that characteristic fine-beaded border, worked by hand, that functions as both a technical solution and a signature of the era. It was originally two brooches designed to be worn as a tiara, later reset as a necklace or corsage ornament.

What makes this story remarkable is the sequence. Fanning had chosen the necklace from the Cartier vault before Sarah Burton independently proposed embroidering wisteria onto the gown. "The magical thing about it all," she told Vogue, "was that I had picked out that necklace before Sarah had come up with the wisteria idea on her own. If that's not meant to be, I don't know what is."

Old-cut diamonds produce a warmer, more intimate play of light than their modern counterparts: less brilliance in the contemporary sense, more depth. Against platinum, in millegrain, they glow rather than flash. Art Deco is the grammar most people reach for when they think of antique Cartier. What Fanning wore last night was something older, and in its way more opulent — the grammar of the Belle Époque, when jewelry was expected to quote nature directly, before geometry replaced the garden.

Sources: Vogue · Grazia · WWD · Galerie Magazine

Felicity Jones & Kirsten Dunst
Fred Leighton

Two women. One house. Both making the same quiet argument with considerable force.

Felicity Jones arrived wearing Fred Leighton platinum-set diamond drop earrings and a bracelet that whispered rather than announced themselves. Kirsten Dunst, in Celine, wore Fred Leighton Art Deco diamond scroll earrings — the precisely geometric, rectilinear language of the 1920s and early 1930s. Rebecca Selva, Chief Creative Officer of Fred Leighton, says it plainly: "Vintage and antique jewelry is not old. It's timeless. Wonderful designs have no age."

Platinum-set diamond jewelry carries its own historical argument. It was the Belle Époque and Edwardian period that made platinum the prestige setting metal of choice, prized for its exceptional hardness and near-colorless appearance. The Art Deco scroll — that particular geometry of movement frozen in platinum and pavé — is one of the most refined formal solutions in the history of Western jewelry design. Both women understood this. Neither performed it.

Sources: Variety · WWD · Natural Diamonds

Jean Schlumberger &
The Brooch Renaissance

We have been watching the brooch's return in the market for some time. This season, the red carpet did not merely confirm it — it announced a full-scale cultural reinstatement of one of the oldest and most personal objects in the fine jewelry vocabulary. Six significant vintage and archival brooches on a single carpet. The market has been moving; the carpet has caught up.

Shaboozey wore a Briony Raymond vintage diamond brooch — a sixteen-carat Van Cleef & Arpels piece — on the lapel of his custom Campillo suit, alongside Mikimoto pearls worn as a watch chain and a Chopard L'Heure du Diamant watch. This is a documented Van Cleef & Arpels diamond brooch of sixteen carats, transacted through one of the most scrupulous vintage dealers in the American market. "It's my first Oscars," Shaboozey said. "I felt like I had to do it right." He did.

Arón Piper adorned his cream jacket lapel with a pin by Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co., paired with matching Sixteen Stone earrings. Schlumberger joined Tiffany in 1956 after years in Paris developing the surrealist, biomorphic vocabulary that would define his career. The Sixteen Stone earring, with its pavé-set diamond clusters in an organic, almost floral configuration, exemplifies his ability to make a hard material feel alive. We have handled Schlumberger pieces at Odeon. You know within seconds that you are holding something made by someone who understood the grammar of jewelry at a fundamental level.

Channing Tatum wore the Tiffany Bird on a Rock in platinum and 18-karat yellow gold with a central diamond exceeding twenty-two carats. Robert Downey Jr. wore the same iconic design while presenting — a pavé diamond bird perched upon a green tourmaline of over thirty-nine carats. Schlumberger first sketched the Bird on a Rock in 1965 after encountering a yellow cockatoo outside his home in Guadeloupe. The design has perched on Hollywood lapels for over six decades without aging a day.

The yellow gold Boucheron Bee brooch Leonardo DiCaprio wore dates to 1964 — from the house's private collection, featuring yellow enamel, garnets, and diamonds, rooted in Frédéric Boucheron's lifelong fascination with natural forms. Over sixty years old, worn by an actor presenting on the night his film earned serious Oscar consideration. The decision says something deliberate about taste.

Three brooches worn together, counter-clockwise, on one black cape · Kate Hawley, Best Costume Design, Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro) · naturaldiamonds.com ↗

The most extraordinary vintage jewelry moment of the entire ceremony did not happen on the red carpet. It happened inside the Dolby Theatre, when costume designer Kate Hawley accepted the Academy Award for Best Costume Design — wearing three Jean Schlumberger brooches from the Tiffany & Co. Archives pinned in a counter-clockwise arc to her black cape.

The 1952 piece is early Schlumberger — he had been with Tiffany only a few years, still finding the language he would eventually transform. The 1969 piece is late Schlumberger in full command. To wear these three pieces together, across a thirty-year arc of a single designer's output, is a curatorial statement from a woman who spent months immersed in archival research for her film. It is entirely deliberate. We find it remarkable.

Emily V. Gordon, arriving alongside Kumail Nanjiani in Giorgio Armani, wore a brooch by Saidian Vintage Jewels — a house whose entire identity is built around the sourcing and curation of fine antique and estate pieces — paired with a Vacheron Constantin watch. One of the most fluently assembled vintage ensembles of the evening.

We add Rose Byrne here not as vintage in the strict sense, but because Taffin — the house of James de Givenchy — operates in a philosophical register we recognise. The question-mark-shaped serpentine gold torque carrying a 22.58-carat antique-cut yellow-brown diamond is a piece in which the stone, not the setting, makes the argument. The antique cut tells the whole story: these are not modern brilliant-cut diamonds engineered for maximum light return. They are stones that hold warmth, that have texture, that show their age.

Sources: Natural Diamonds · Hollywood Reporter · Something About Rocks · Galerie Magazine

Nicole Kidman & the
1966 Omega Sapphette

We include the wristwatch not because it is strictly jewelry — it is not — but because the 1966 Omega Sapphette represents a category of object our clients increasingly ask us about: mid-century dress watches with the visual authority and material quality of fine jewelry. A 14K white gold Sapphette with diamond detailing, drawn from the Omega archives where Kidman had direct access as a house ambassador.

On the wrist, against a custom Chanel feather gown, it reads not as a timepiece but as a diamond cuff. The decision to pull a sixty-year-old object from an archive rather than mount a new stone on a new bracelet speaks to exactly the kind of thinking we believe produces the best personal jewelry. Kidman has, over many years of red carpet appearances, demonstrated a sustained commitment to pieces with genuine historical weight. We note this not as flattery but as observation: it is a discernible editorial position, held consistently over time.

Sources: Something About Rocks — Watches · WWD

The Market
Is Speaking

We spend most of our days in a very specific conversation — with other dealers, with auction specialists, with the private clients who bring us pieces to evaluate and place. The Oscars red carpet is not that conversation. It is louder, faster, and considerably less rigorous. But it is not entirely separate. What appears on that carpet in March tends to inform what buyers ask for in May and June.

What this evening confirmed: the signed vintage brooch is reasserting itself at the very highest level of the market. Six significant archival or vintage brooches on a single carpet — including three pieces from the Tiffany & Co. Archives worn by a costume designer accepting an Oscar — is not coincidence. It is a recognizable cultural movement. The secondary market for Schlumberger has been deepening for several years. We are watching it surface publicly.

Belle Époque and Edwardian pieces — the territory of Cartier circa 1903, of platinum-set diamond work with millegrain and old-cut stones — are being looked at with fresh eyes by a generation of clients who have grown skeptical of the contemporary luxury narrative. The mid-century archive continues to deepen its hold on the imagination of serious collectors.

A 1903 Cartier wisteria necklace does not ask to be evaluated on trend. A 1952 Schlumberger brooch does not require context to make itself understood. These objects simply exist — fully formed, completely themselves — and invite the room to meet them on their own terms.

That is, in the end, what we look for. In the objects we source, in the clients we work with, in the pieces we choose to stand behind. The carpet Sunday  night offered several such invitations. We accepted all of them.