Zendaya, Anne Hathaway Embrace Antiquity’s Luster

A jewelry movement simmering across the market is getting a dose of Hollywood red carpet shine courtesy of “The Odyssey.”

Across recent high jewelry collections, trade shows and independent designers, ancient coins, intaglios, archaeological objects and materials with a discernible past have begun to cohabitate with conventional diamonds and precious stones. The interest is less in reproducing historical jewelry — no one is asking clients to dress like Julius Caesar — than in giving contemporary pieces the patina, uniqueness and narrative of objects that appear to have lived another life.

That undercurrent was visible at The Couture Show in Las Vegas last May. Sylva & Cie, for example, incorporated an ancient Roman gaming die into its work, extending designer Sylva Yepremian’s interest in antique stones and historically informed objects. HOWL crafted a collection with Venetian glass paired with Old European-cut diamond accents. Though not archaeological, the designs tapped into a related appetite for inherited craft and materials with ephemera from the past.

In Paris, the interest extended beyond the Greco-Roman world. Van Cleef & Arpels looked to ancient Egypt for its 180-piece “Fascinating Egypt” collection, while Chanel’s “Signes & Symboles” collection explored talismanic motifs and hard stones. The cultural references were distinct, but reflected the broader fascination with antiquity, symbolism and objects that carry historical weight.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has now given the Greco-Roman side of that movement a global platform with Hollywood’s biggest stars making the rounds with multiple premieres across the globe. Method dressing with clothing establishes the reference but jewels push the narrative over the edge, adding material and provenance.

Zendaya offered the most literal expression at a London photocall, wearing Glenn Spiro earrings incorporating Ziwiye gold plaques dating to the first millennium B.C. in Iran, paired with Barron London old mine-cut diamond rings. At the premiere, a Chopard bib necklace with more than 76 carats of diamonds sat against a sculpted Schiaparelli breastplate — jewelry as armor. In Paris, Fope’s woven gold designs accompanied archival Alexander McQueen for Givenchy couture rooted in Greek mythology.

Anne Hathaway, a Bulgari ambassador, drew from a Roman lexicon already embedded in the house’s identity. At the Paris premiere, Hathaway paired her brown Louis Vuitton gown with a Bulgari high jewelry gold choker centered on a cabochon sapphire and traced in pavé diamonds. Bulgari did not need to manufacture a mythology for the moment; its archive was already fluent in one.

Lupita Nyong’o added Sabyasachi pearls, Polki diamonds and a Bengal Tiger ring, while Charlize Theron wore Glenn Spiro diamond rivière earrings and Tiffany & Co. designs. The men largely kept jewelry in a supporting role. For this particular epic, the women carried the history and the carats.

The press tour did not create jewelry’s renewed interest in antiquity, but it gave the movement its most cinematic expression yet, bringing ancient objects, old-world techniques and storied house codes out of trade-show vitrines and into Hollywood’s high-wattage glare.