Shine Like a Star: Red Carpet Bling
Awards Season is Prime Time for Jewelry Designers
When you wear something new to the Oscars, you are turning yourself into a walking billboard.
— Journalist Susan Jack
Bling is the thing during the Hollywood awards season. Starlets step out bedecked in diamond rings the size of skating rinks that often steal the spotlight and certainly draw the attention of photographers.
They are objects of envy indeed, but most of those coveted sparklers do not belong to the adorned actresses. The most attention-getting pieces are loaned to the stars from exclusive, high-end jewelers that partner with the rich and famous to showcase their brilliant bijou. Alas, unless they intend to buy, even luminaries such as Katie Holmes and Angelina Jolie must return their 20-carat rocks when the proverbial clock strikes 12.
It's up to the jewelers to help the celebs decide which trinkets and treasures to wear so the stars, in turn, can make all of them shine on the red carpet.
Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
Nobody knows jewels like Neil Lane, Hollywood’s pre-eminent go-to fine jeweler. When an A-lister needs a bauble to match a ball gown, she may call on Lane to create a custom designed dazzler that could be remembered forever. Lane has designed jewels for Miley Cyrus, Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon (who wore 130 carats worth of diamonds at the 2011 Oscars) and Madonna.
“A few days before the 2009 Oscars I received a call from Madonna about jewels for her "Vanity Fair" Oscar party dress,” Lane said in an interview. “I started preparing black diamond beads and stringing them together with white diamonds. I also brought with me one of her favorite diamond bangles, [which] she says, brings her luck.
"The long black diamond chains were perfect for the dress and so was the diamond bangle. For a finishing touch [I added] this large black onyx and diamond ring which, besides having a glamorous look, added the rock and roll.”
Lane's intricate designs are often a work in progress until the moment an actress walks the red carpet.
“When Kate Winslet was nominated for an Oscar, we worked on the length of her diamond earrings for two weeks,” explained Lane. “At the last minute we lengthened them an inch for a more dramatic and elegant look. The workshop stayed open the whole night to have the earrings ready for her grand entrance.”
For a star on the rise, the precious metals and stones she wears on awards night are as important as her role.
When Lane was asked to adorn then breakout star Jennifer Hudson for the 2006 premiere of “Dreamgirls,” he asked himself, “What jewels would suit her best?”
When Hudson was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award that same year, Lane booked a room in the same hotel as the actress so he and a security guard -- jewelers take the utmost precaution to prevent theft – could deliver the large, dangling, statement-making earrings to her himself.
“She was shining in a beautiful purple dress and the rubies we had prepared were the perfect match,” Lane recalled. “It was a very exciting time.”
Big Promotion
The Academy Awards ceremony is the biggest night of the year for actors -- and jewelers. Jewelers trip over themselves to get celebrities to wear their gems that night.
“The Oscars, the holy grail of all awards shows,” said Susan Jack, a Los Angeles-based tabloid reporter and social media manager who has worked for such magazines as "Us Weekly" and "In Touch." “When a star walks the red carpet, reporters only have time for two questions. One, how do you feel? And two, who are you wearing?”
The more exposure a designer gets for her product -- whether it’s jewelry, haute couture dresses or a pair of strappy high-heeled sandals made entirely of pave diamonds -- the more in-demand that designer becomes.
“While the Oscars are the most respected awards show in the film world, it was originally created as a promotional tool,” Jack said. “When you wear something new to the Oscars, you are turning yourself into a walking billboard.”
Which is why, Jack points out, well-established movie stars opt for jewelers’ lines of one-of-a-kind vintage or estate jewels.
“With vintage you get the cachet of the designer, but you’re not advertising a line that everybody can come out and get,” says Jack.
Return Policy
It used to be that A-list movie stars went home Oscar night with awards, giant bags of swag, including luxury spa treatments and trips around the world, and the borrowed jewels around their necks.
Not so anymore, says Jack.
“Jewelers have learned very quickly that they have to have enormously binding legalities and huge telephone directory-thick agreements when it comes to the jewelry they loan out,” she said.
And with good reason. “In 2007, a designer loaned Paris Hilton $60,000 worth of jewels, and she was under the impression that her lending her name to it and wearing it about town was her earning it,” Jack said. “The insurance company took her to court. Then, in 2011, Courtney Love claimed to have lost $114,000 worth of jewels loaned to her by fine jewelry retailer Jacob & Co. It was foolish on their part to even have loaned it out.”
Even if a jeweler gives a movie star a gem at night’s end, it doesn’t make much financial sense for the star to keep the item.
“In the golden age of Hollywood, it used to be that gift bags were not taxable,” Jack recounted. “But the (Internal Revenue Service) has changed all that and anything worth over $13,000 is considered a taxable gift. Now, almost none of the celebs will keep the bling, and even if they do, they’ll pay for it.”
- Photo Credit Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images Getty Images
