Where It Girls Get Their Diamonds
Diamonds are an unwritten dress-code requirement at the Cannes Film Festival. This year, Irina Shayk glided down one premiere’s red carpet in a tiered Giorgio Armani gown accessorized by a giant diamond ear cuff with graduated gems. Lori Harvey arrived at her first red carpet in a crushed velvet Dundas halter gown with a trail of pear-shaped diamonds tracing her sternum, and later at the amfAR Gala in a red long-sleeved LaQuan Smith gown with a stomach cutout and diamond rings twisted around her fingers. The Cannes circuit also included Gigi Hadid, Elsa Hosk, Eva Longoria, Amelia Gray, and many others, each wearing a vault’s worth of diamonds to complement their gowns.
These jewelry moments had more than high carat counts in common. All of the pieces referenced above came from Messika, a rising French label founded in 2005 by Valérie Messika, daughter of diamond magnate André Messika. The house is having a moment with big-name clients: Before Cannes, Doja Cat, Alton Mason, and Carla Bruni all wore Messika at the 2023 Met Gala.
Speaking to stylists like Molly Dickson and Elly Karamoh, who dressed clients like Harvey and Sydney Sweeney for Cannes, there’s a sense that Messika is the fine jewelry manifestation of a rising starlet’s je ne sais quoi. Dickson’s three defining words for the brand are modern, cool, and young. “Their pieces were made for the It girls, which I think filled a much-needed void in the high jewelry market,” she explained.
The Messika brand did in fact originate out of a sense that something was missing in high jewelry. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Valérie Messika said she noticed a lack of wearability in the diamonds she studied under her father. The stones were saved for engagement rings and wedding bands when she was growing up, and possessed a tone that struck her as somber and “heavy.” Where were the diamonds for occasions that were still special, but mainly for the person wearing them?
So for nearly two decades, Messika has designed high jewelry in opposition to outdated ideas about diamonds and attracted A-list celebrities along the way. She infuses her pieces with a sense of light and play; the stones are meant to be “flexible” and wearable without losing their inherent beauty. The brand’s trademark across earrings, rings, necklaces, and bracelets is diamonds arranged as close to the skin as possible within their settings, allowing them to catch the light and shimmer even more than a typical piece. It’s all to capture a feeling Messika hopes to pass on to her clients: “I want them to have freedom when they’re wearing it.”
The Cannes red carpet is the latest of many peaks for the 18-year-old brand. Messika has been steadily incorporated into celebrities’ wardrobes over the years. When Kristen Stewart rebelled at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival by changing from her dress-code-mandated heels into sneakers, she did so with a spiky Messika cuff wrapped around her ear. Almost seven years later, at Rihanna’s history-making Super Bowl halftime performance this past February, the singer performed a high-intensity medley of her greatest hits in a red jumpsuit punctuated by a handful of Messika chain, stud, and cuff earrings. Kim Kardashian mixed Messika diamonds with Bulgari jewelry for her Time 100 Gala appearance in April. Beyoncé has been one of Messika’s biggest celebrity supporters for nearly a decade. “She embodies this [power] that also inspires me in my everyday creation,” the designer said of the pop and R&B superstar.
“As a newcomer in the industry”—newcomer is a relative term, given the centuries of experience other high jewelry labels possess—“[these moments] give me a lot of positive exposure,” Messika added.
With purposefully mismatched earrings and seductively close-to-the-skin fastenings, Messika jewelry has a rebellious energy that isn’t often seen in the legacy houses dominating the red carpet.
“Messika is one of the edgiest brands out there,” stylist Maeve Reilly told Bazaar. “They have really cemented their place in the industry by delivering incredible statement pieces with a contemporary twist.” It’s this perspective that has made the brand stand out in a saturated market, Reilly added, leading her to accessorize clients like Eva Longoria in Messika jewels.
This approach to high-wattage shine isn’t one-note; it has range. It can skew retro, like the bib necklace with graduated diamonds Gigi Hadid wore to attend a Cannes premiere with a strapless beige gown. ( “We have a very strong relationship and friendship together,” Messika said of the supermodel.) It can be a subtle accent, like the diamond choker set with a single floating emerald Elsa Hosk paired with her surrealist tulle Viktor & Rolf corset gown. Or, in Irina Shayk’s case, it can be a capital-S statement piece: a choker shaped like a scarab from Egyptian mythology whose wings wrapped around Shayk’s neck, comprised of 2,550 individual stones with a 33-carat cushion diamond at its center. Messika called it “one of the most amazing and expensive pieces I’ve ever made.”
Looks like these are an achievement in a red-carpet scene dominated by centuries-old jewelry ateliers. Valérie Messika appears just grateful to be nominated for these big placements, even when they don’t make it past the stylist’s jewelry tray and onto the carpet. Recalling a recent moment when Jane Fonda came this close to wearing a piece but switched at the last minute, the designer shrugged. “Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose,” she said. “But when we lose the opportunity of a red carpet, when I see the image after, it’s always meaningful that we lost the game.”
When Messika wins, it sparkles beyond the step-and-repeat. Right around Cannes, constant street-style muse Kendall Jenner and Alton Mason—a runway fixture at Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and other labels—were named the faces of Messika’s latest ad campaign.
Where names like those go, more A-list peers and shoppers will follow. Maybe Harvey’s stylist Karamoh summarizes Messika’s appeal best:“[It’s] just perfect to accessorize a 2023 It girl.”
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