Timothée Chalamet’s close relationship with Cartier means he gets access to more than just the hottest catalog of watches on the planet. The Parisian jeweler has made a habit of creating one-of-kind pieces for the actor’s red carpet appearances. Tonight, in London for the premiere of Dune: Part Two, Chalamet wore a bespoke necklace that’s as dazzling as it is imbued with the spirit of Arrakis.
Chalamet’s necklace—or creation, as Cartier describes it—was devised with some creative direction from the actor. The result is a piece of jewelry loaded with so many subtle Easter eggs to Dune that breaking them all down makes you understand how Swifties must feel any time Taylor does…anything. The necklace—which Chalamet paired at the premiere with an equally shimmering custom look from his fashion BFF Haider Ackermann—was designed to be modular, with set pieces that Chalamet can rotate to show off different combinations of the 900 (!) glimmering stones embedded throughout.
Julian Ungano
On one side of the rotating pieces, the parade of diamonds—in orange, yellow, and brown—are an homage to Arrakis’ desert terrain. But Cartier didn’t merely consider the colors here. That would be too easy. The maison also set inverted diamonds, creating a spiky texture that mimics the Dune planet’s bumpy topography. On the reverse side of these sandy stones are a combination of blue sapphires and spinels meant to evoke the eyes of Chalamet’s Fremen tribe in the film. (Dune factoid: Their shockingly blue eyes are a side effect from ingesting “spice.”) And while this isn’t mentioned in Cartier’s press release, the necklace’s tubular design doesn’t not remind me of the giant sandworms that burrow beneath the surface of Arrakis.
“Cartier creations have always been my first choice for important moments and getting to collaborate on this project only reinforced that for me,” Chalamet said in the release. “I think Marie-Laure [Cérède, Cartier’s creative director of jewelry and watchmaking] and I found a way to evoke the desert and harsh beauty of Dune in the Cartier style; a wonderful opposite to the candy-colored enchantment of our first collaboration together.”
