Brooching the Issue:
A New Era of Men’s Jewelry

The beginning of awards season is typically the high point of the jewelry-gawking calendar. In 2024 this was true, but there was a rival event this year, and both had a lot to say about how men are wearing their finery at this point and beyond. I am, of course, talking about the Super Bowl. “The walk” from the bus to the locker room was coined in the NBA and has been the defacto runway for modern men’s fashion. More recently, NFL players have taken center stage and have caught up with the perennial peacocks of professional basketball.

There’s always been flair in the NFL (shout out to Broadway Joe Namath) but the styles and jewelry choices that these all-stars have been selecting have opened the conversation around what men’s fashion can be. The Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, Travis Kelce wore close-fitting chain links with his custom boucle Amiri set. The 49ers’ linebacker Fred Warner wore a lapel pin of stringed diamonds and pearls on his Louis Vuitton double-breasted look, which LeBron James also wore to the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Football is more popular than any one religion in the United States. For these men, who represent the qualities many closely associate with masculine ideals, to wear classically feminine pieces says the culture has shifted.

The diamond tennis necklace that was once the bastion of WASPy ladies who lunched can now be seen on men everywhere. The Rock wore one to the Oscars earlier this year, and Usher wore three to the 2024 NAACP Awards with a Laquan Smith ensemble. They are understated and delicate–two words not normally associated with the personas of the men wearing them. On the other end of the spectrum, men are adopting looks more closely associated with heiresses and Golden Girls.

At the Oscars and their after parties, heirloom-quality brooches have graced the lapels of everyone from Cillian Murphy’s starburst pin, to Nas’s snakelike number with a sizable pearl, to Jeffery Wright and Sir Ben Kingsley’s respective diamond flower pins. Rings are nothing new to men’s style, but they go far beyond the pinky in 2024. A$AP Rocky wore rings on every finger–save his thumbs–while hugging fashion designer Raf Simons at this year’s Bottega Veneta show in Milan.

For these men to wear classically feminine pieces says the culture has shifted.

We all were beaten over the head with quiet luxury throughout 2023. The inoffensive tonal palette of expertly draped and ruinously expensive fabrics swaddled the industry and popular culture. There is validity to this look as both a level set after years of loud luxury streetwear dominance and as a return to the craft of making clothes laid bare. Elegance takes many forms, and even quiet adherents augment their minimal looks with tasteful jewelry with a mid-century feel or a delicate medallion. Cartier’s square Tank has been the ascendant watch shape in recent years, they recently re-released the Baignoire, its oval cousin. But no matter what the style, the overarching trend is that smaller is better. A 40mm bezel feels almost vulgar in 2024–the style standard has returned to 36mm which looks very nice with diamond accents.

Quiet will likely remain, but there is a strong momentum to the pendulum swinging in the other direction. This is taking multiple forms, like the Western resurgence led by Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton and Beyoncé on the rest of the earth. But most interesting, is a more general feeling of vivid opulence. No one exemplifies this sea change better than the undisputed king of the red carpet: Colman Domingo. His looks are louchely vibrant. His wrists, hands, neck, lapel–even his bow tie–are endlessly adorned with natural diamond baubles. He exudes confidence, his skin shines, and his smile radiates joy. “What a time to be alive!” He seems to be saying with every appearance. Jewel-toned and silky, this shift takes men’s style away from androgyny and unisex toward just sex.

The level of comfort men are showing from across the style spectrum speaks to a normalization that this country, and the world, will benefit from. The more comfortable we are with expressing ourselves, the less we rely on ridged moors–and the negativity they spawn–to define us. If a diamond tennis necklace on the world’s biggest action star and boucle suit on a Pro Bowl Tight End represents the leading edge of a new era in identity, I can’t wait to see where we go from here.