When Fashion Ascends: Jewelry as a Spiritual Statement at the Met Gala 2018
There are red carpets, and then there are altars of style. The Met Gala, always a sanctum of visual extravagance, transformed into something truly otherworldly in 2018. When the theme Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination was unveiled, it wasn’t merely a call to extravagance—it was a theological provocation. It asked designers, muses, and musers alike to step beyond the temporal and channel the eternal. The intersection of ecclesiastical influence and sartorial spectacle summoned a wave of reverence across fashion. The fabric shimmered with metaphor, silhouettes mimicked saints and seraphim, and jewelry—sacred, metallic, glimmering—rose to become the liturgy of the evening.
To walk the steps of the Met that year was to ascend not into a fashion show, but into a pageant of icons. It was a night of aesthetic transfiguration, where couture kissed the divine and ornamentation became incantation. Jewelry in this setting became less about accessorizing and more about witnessing. Gemstones became scripture. Chains replaced rosaries. Crowns rivaled celestial halos. The attendees didn’t just wear jewelry—they anointed themselves in it.
The key to this metaphysical fashion language lay in how deeply it respected history. The jewelry chosen by celebrities wasn’t simply opulent—it was mythic. These were not mere adornments; they were secular relics, carrying centuries of artistry and religious reference in their precious weight. They invoked the craftsmanship of Gothic cathedrals and the spiritual intensity of relic shrines. Diamonds and rubies became the new stained glass. Gold was no longer just a metal—it was the flesh of transcendence.
Katherine Langford exemplified this sentiment. Her appearance may have drawn admiration for its beauty, but her jewelry elevated her presence into something other. Draped in crimson by Prada, Langford’s look could have passed for stately or classic on any other occasion. But in the context of Heavenly Bodies, her look morphed into a benediction. Her rings, antique and commanding, were like offerings at an altar—aged, resplendent, and enigmatic. One could almost imagine them echoing with ancient prayers, their metal warmed by centuries of human touch. They bore the kind of patina that only time and reverence can bestow.
Her gold earrings danced not just with light but with purpose. Suspended like miniature spires, they conjured the architecture of Gothic basilicas, soaring and symmetrical, full of sacred geometry. These were not accessories to complete a look; they were part of a spiritual vestment. They hovered beside her face like icons in procession, announcing something transformative and ageless.
Langford’s transformation on that red carpet marked more than a career evolution—it was an embodiment of emotional archetype. The transition from ingénue to icon was not staged through scandal or provocation but through jewelry that told stories older than the red carpet itself. Her accessories whispered narratives of female power, spiritual awakening, and quiet defiance. In a time where so much red carpet fashion screams, Langford’s choice of rings and bracelets hummed with contemplative grace. It was not a costume—it was a character.
Jewelry as Liturgy: Sacred Objects and Modern Identity
To understand the resonance of jewelry at the 2018 Met Gala is to understand the Catholic imagination itself—a world not just of doctrine, but of symbols, relics, and beauty enshrined in the material. The Catholic Church has long understood the power of image and object. Its liturgy is performative, its iconography layered, and its relics revered. In this tradition, jewelry becomes more than precious—it becomes spiritual technology, a means to commune with what lies beyond.
This is why jewelry, in this setting, became more than visual punctuation. It became scripture you could wear. For every antique ring or diamond cross, there was a parallel with a reliquary or a liturgical artifact. What had once adorned saints was now being reclaimed and reinterpreted by celebrities—not as a parody, but as an homage. The line between sacred relic and high fashion blurred, and in doing so, illuminated something essential about our cultural moment.
In Katherine Langford’s case, her Fred Leighton antique rings and bracelets did not feel like accessories scavenged from a vault—they felt like sacred bequests. They were imbued with a spirit of continuity, carrying the energy of previous owners, previous centuries. This kind of jewelry doesn’t just shine—it speaks. It tells of hidden histories, of craft traditions passed down through goldsmiths’ hands, of women who once wore these talismans in rooms far removed from flashing cameras.
And when worn on a red carpet where the theme is Heavenly Bodies, these objects are transfigured. They don’t just decorate the body—they ritualize it. They suggest that modern identity, often fragmented and curated for virality, can find grounding in objects of permanence. A vintage bracelet is not just a nod to style—it is a link to a lineage. A crucifix is not just religious iconography—it is a meditation on mortality and grace.
Jewelry at the Met Gala 2018 challenged the fleeting nature of celebrity by anchoring it in historical gravity. It asked: What if our moments of fame could carry the weight of centuries? What if beauty, instead of being ephemeral, was enduring? What if our adornments could do more than dazzle—what if they could testify?
Rihanna’s jewelry, more than any other ensemble that night, provided the clearest answer to those questions.
Rihanna as Divine Archetype: When the Jewelry Speaks in Tongues
To speak of Rihanna’s look at the 2018 Met Gala is to speak of metamorphosis. She did not attend the Gala—she presided over it. Dressed by Maison Margiela in a papal-inspired ensemble complete with a mitre, Rihanna elevated the night from spectacle to sacrament. But it was her jewelry that consecrated her look. It was not just divine—it was doctrinal.
Her centerpiece: a Cartier crucifix necklace from 1936. This was no ordinary ornament. It was ecclesiastical theatre condensed into jewel form. Constructed of diamonds, pearls, moonstones, and opals, this necklace could have belonged to a cardinal, a queen, or a myth. Its mosaic design felt lifted from the walls of Byzantine basilicas, replete with sacred birds and cosmic stones. And yet, there it was, resting on the chest of a 21st-century pop oracle.
What made Rihanna’s jewelry transcend fashion was its precision. She did not over-layer to impress—she layered to proclaim. Beneath the Cartier crucifix was a vintage riviere diamond necklace from Kentshire. This pairing was not haphazard—it was holy. The riviere sparkled with an almost Marian purity, creating contrast against the richness of the crucifix above. Together, they mirrored the duality of faith: light and shadow, glory and humility, opulence and surrender.
Rihanna’s use of moonstones was especially poetic. Long associated with divine femininity, intuition, and the cycles of the moon, moonstones added a layer of mysticism to her regalia. They shimmered not with boldness but with inner knowing. As the Catholic imagination elevates mystery and sacrament, so too did Rihanna’s jewelry evoke a kind of sacred ambiguity—both sensual and sanctified.
She wore her pieces not to assert authority, but to channel it. Her jewelry was not performative—it was prayerful. Each stone, each chain, each clasp, seemed to bless her with ancient power. She didn’t simply wear a mitre—she wore the weight of queens, martyrs, and muses. In Rihanna’s hands (and ears and collarbones), jewelry became an invocation. A call to remember that fashion, at its best, is not surface, but soul.
Gilded Sovereignty: Amber Heard and the Apotheosis of the Female Hand
There are appearances, and then there are arrivals. Amber Heard’s presence at the 2018 Met Gala was not a fashion moment—it was a visual sermon. While many attendees leaned into celestial grandeur with jeweled crosses, embroidered veils, or angelic halos, Heard descended the staircase as if conjured from a lost altarpiece—holy, human, and wrapped in the flame of ecclesiastical red. But it wasn’t just the gown that immortalized her; it was her hands—deified in gold and lit with rings that radiated dominion, sensuality, and sovereignty.
In her crimson Carolina Herrera gown, Heard was every bit the martyr, the mystic, the monarch. The color red was not simply dramatic—it was theological. It spoke of sacrifice and seduction, of power reclaimed through suffering. But if the dress was the liturgy, her jewelry was the scripture. Her fingers, gilded and deliberate, became the focal point of her entire ensemble. They were not extensions of her body; they were relics in themselves—bejeweled, exalted, and saturated with intent.
Her rings were not chosen for sparkle alone. There was a deliberate tension in the way they coexisted—ornate yet balanced, heavy yet refined. The Beladora pieces whispered of royal heirlooms, while the Jen Meyer studs offered minimalist contrast. There was no thematic excess, no visual clutter. Instead, Heard offered a jewelry composition that was architectural—each ring a structural pillar in a cathedral of gold.
But what made it transcendent was the choreography of her hands. These were not idle gestures meant to pose for photographers. Her fingers were held in postures echoing those of Madonnas and martyrs from illuminated manuscripts. They signaled both offering and refusal, devotion and defiance. When she raised her hand, it wasn’t to wave—it was to invoke. And what she invoked was the sacred power of the feminine divine in its most gilded, glorious form.
This was not jewelry as decoration. This was jewelry as invocation. Amber did not wear gold. She was gold.
The Sacred Semiotics of Fingers and Flames
Throughout the centuries, hands have never been neutral in sacred art. They reach out in benediction, curl in agony, cradle holy infants, and hold up divine texts. They are the conduits of both faith and rebellion. In Amber Heard’s 2018 Met Gala appearance, this iconographic tradition found a modern manifestation. Her hands became visual chants, theological symbols in motion. The rings on her fingers served not merely as accessories, but as amplified meanings—each one a cipher of ancient liturgies, each stack a chapter in her visual scripture.
Art history is saturated with hands that speak when mouths are silenced. In Byzantine and Gothic panels, saints and sinners alike are recognized not by facial expressions, but by gestures—subtle tilts, emphatic lifts, fingers arranged like benedictions. Heard seemed to inhabit this space with instinctual fluency. Her fingers didn't just hold rings; they held ritual. She didn’t perform style—she embodied sacrament.
And there was alchemy in her polish. Molten gold lacquer on her nails acted as the connective tissue between flesh and metal. It unified the entire vision—her hands were no longer just human appendages; they were gilded scrolls, written in a visual language centuries old. Her rings danced upon that molten canvas, like apostolic verses atop illuminated vellum.
Her look challenged the spectator to reckon with the visual vocabulary of power. For centuries, power has been wrapped around men’s fingers—signet rings denoting status, bishop’s rings symbolizing spiritual authority. In Heard’s case, power wasn’t borrowed—it was owned. Her hands, adorned and luminous, disrupted traditional hierarchies. She wasn’t accessorized—she was exalted.
This transformation was not accidental. It was an intentional statement about what it means to wield symbolic power on one of fashion’s most sacred stages. There was no necklace to act as a crucifix, no tiara to mimic heavenly coronation. Amber didn’t need those signals. She declared that her hands alone were enough. They preached, they performed, they prophesied. They wore rings not as symbols of submission or marriage—but as tools of declaration, of fire, of sovereignty.
When viewed through this lens, her choice to emphasize the hand becomes a subversive reclamation. In a cultural moment where women’s bodies are so often controlled, surveilled, and interpreted by others, Amber placed the power squarely in her palms. Each ring she wore was an answer to centuries of erasure. Each nail coated in gold was a silent vow to never bow.
Armor, Relic, Revelation: Jewelry as Feminist Theology
In the lexicon of sacred aesthetics, gold is not just color—it is covenant. It denotes the incorruptible. It speaks of purity, transcendence, enlightenment. Gold lines the pages of the Qur’an, frames the faces of saints, and halos the heads of divine beings across faith traditions. It is simultaneously a material and a metaphor. At the Met Gala 2018, Amber Heard transformed gold from ornament into ontological truth. She didn’t just wear it—she became its emissary.
Her jewelry was her armor, but not the kind built to deflect arrows or bullets. This armor was spiritual. It was designed to repel invisibility, to reject diminishment, to protect sacred identity from the corrosion of critique. She stepped into her role not as muse, but as high priestess of her own mythology. And in doing so, she illuminated what fashion can be when stripped of its commercial pretenses—it becomes a kind of feminist theology.
Rings, especially when stacked, carry a weight of historical meanings. They signal allegiance, inheritance, vows, eternity. In Heard’s case, they signaled none of these things conventionally. Instead, her rings seemed to say: I belong to no one. My story is not yours to author. I am crowned not by a man, not by the press, not by tradition—but by my own hand.
This is what made her aesthetic choice so revolutionary. She transformed jewelry into relic. She inverted the traditional relationship between woman and adornment. Normally, the ring is valuable because of the woman who receives it. Here, the woman made the rings valuable through the sheer force of presence and intention. Her hands were not empty—they were offerings. Her fingers didn’t await a proposal—they already bore the covenant of selfhood.
This act of visual subversion becomes even more striking in the context of an event like the Met Gala, where beauty is often equated with excess, and attention is currency. Heard’s look was richly embellished, yes—but not bloated. It was curated with the eye of a philosopher, the touch of an iconographer. She understood that true power isn’t shouted—it glows.
And glow she did. Her rings caught the light and refracted centuries of symbolism back at us. They reminded viewers that fashion can be archival, can be liturgical, can be lit from within by myth.
When the Body Becomes a Reliquary: Katharine McPhee’s Jewelry as Sacred Text
In a year where the Met Gala asked celebrities to merge the celestial with the sartorial, Katharine McPhee offered one of the most quietly powerful interpretations. Hers was not a spectacle designed to shock or disrupt. There were no wings, no towering crowns, no theatrical robes. Instead, McPhee walked the carpet like a vision from a forgotten gospel—bathed in gold, woven in reverence, carrying not props but relics. Her jewelry did not decorate her body; it transformed it into a sacred vessel. And through her neck, where chains and icons met skin, she invoked not just a theme but a theology.
The layers of gold that draped across her chest were more than decorative flourishes. They were liturgical. Each pendant, medallion, and chain from Virgins Saints & Angels shimmered not with luxury, but with sanctity. They spoke to a centuries-old Catholic tradition where embellishment served not ego, but devotion. To enter a cathedral is to be overwhelmed by the splendor of stained glass, gilded ceilings, jeweled chalices. McPhee’s jewelry mirrored this ritual grandeur. She didn’t just wear necklaces—she wore the architecture of awe.
At a glance, her look seemed rooted in maximalism. But to call it that would be to miss the point. This wasn’t adornment for the sake of extravagance. It was adornment as testimony. Just as monks once copied manuscripts by candlelight, McPhee copied the reverent opulence of high Catholic artistry onto her own form. Her décolletage became a manuscript of gold, each chain a verse, each medallion a sacred pause. The effect was cumulative: the more you looked, the more you saw. Her jewelry unfolded like scripture.
What made this choice especially profound was its refusal to pander to modern red carpet expectations. In an age obsessed with minimalism and visual efficiency, McPhee chose density, texture, and time. She demanded your gaze linger. She reminded us that some stories are too layered for soundbites, too sacred for simplification. Her look was not a caption—it was a litany.
Iconography Worn in Flesh: Necklaces as a Private Altar
To understand Katharine McPhee’s jewelry at the 2018 Met Gala is to understand the sacred logic of the iconostasis. In Eastern Orthodox churches, this sacred screen separates the divine space of the altar from the congregation. Adorned with painted icons of saints, martyrs, and holy scenes, the iconostasis is not just a barrier—it is a bridge between the visible and the invisible, the human and the divine. McPhee’s chest became such a space. Her layered necklaces did not merely rest on skin; they sanctified it. They created a portable sanctuary—a wearable wall of icons through which viewers could glimpse something transcendent.
This transformation was subtle but staggering. Where others chose spectacle, McPhee chose intimacy. Her pendants were not designed to scream from across the room. They were talismans meant to be read, one by one, like beads on a rosary. They required reverence. Her look demanded that you not just see her, but witness her. Every detail—every cross, every antique charm, every Virgin Mary silhouette—was placed with care. It was not a collage of pretty things. It was a prayer.
The beauty of this approach lay in its refusal to distinguish between sacred and personal. In the hands—or neck—of McPhee, the two collapsed into one. These were not just religious symbols—they were symbols of a woman’s inner sanctum. Her body became the altar, her jewelry the offering. It was an act of quiet rebellion against the idea that glamour must always be external, performative, detached. Here, beauty was something internal made visible. The jewelry didn’t crown her; it emanated from her.
It’s worth noting how deeply this echoed the aesthetics of saints in religious art. Often, saints are depicted with layered jewels—not for status, but as a reflection of spiritual richness. Their garb is weighted with meaning. So too was McPhee’s. Her choices aligned her not with the fleeting glamour of a red carpet, but with the timeless tradition of women whose beauty served not vanity, but veneration.
In an era where the body is so often commodified, reduced to shape or shock, McPhee offered a different proposition. She used her body as canvas for theology. She reminded us that what we wear can be more than trend—it can be ritual. Her jewelry was not about visibility. It was about invocation.
Vestments of Meaning: Fashion as Devotion, Jewelry as Resurrection
Katharine McPhee’s use of jewelry in 2018 stands as one of the most powerful lessons in modern red carpet semiotics. It was a moment when jewelry returned to its roots—not as consumer commodity, but as sacred signifier. In Catholicism, vestments are not mere garments. They are texts. They are symbols of office, of mystery, of the metaphysical weight of ceremony. McPhee’s gold chains and relic-inspired adornments followed this tradition to the letter. She did not dress up—she vested.
And in vesting herself, she wrote a new theology of fashion. This was not a costume. It was a calling. The richness of her jewelry did not lie in carats or price points—it lay in intention. It lay in her willingness to slow down, to layer meaning instead of merely styling. In an industry that often prizes speed, McPhee's look required slowness. It asked viewers to reflect, to study, to remember.
The decision to wear pieces by Virgins Saints & Angels further cemented this choice. The brand is known for its sacred motifs, but McPhee didn’t use their jewelry as props. She used them as sacraments. Each piece connected her to a lineage—not of trendsetters, but of truth-tellers, mystics, women who used beauty as a form of storytelling. Her jewelry wasn’t glossy. It was glowing with narrative.
It also invited a broader conversation about the role of excess in fashion. In secular culture, excess is often seen as a flaw. Yet in religious art, excess is a language of praise. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is excessive. The robes of Byzantine emperors were excessive. The treasury of any cathedral is a symphony of gold, silver, enamel, and gem—not because of ego, but because of exaltation. McPhee understood this. Her jewelry was a benediction to that aesthetic legacy. It didn’t overwhelm. It illuminated.
And in this illumination, McPhee offered something more than beauty. She offered resurrection. Not of a trend or a brand—but of meaning itself. In her hands, fashion became capable of spiritual labor. In her necklaces, style became a form of prayer.
This resurrection is perhaps the most important takeaway from her look. That even in an industry driven by novelty, by constant change, by the churn of “what’s next,” there are still moments when stillness reigns. When a look can carry centuries within it. When fashion, stripped of spectacle, becomes sacred again.
Beyond Ornament: Eiza González and the Ascension of Minimalist Spirituality
At the 2018 Met Gala, themed Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination, the red carpet was transformed into a procession of visual opulence. Everywhere one looked, there were jeweled mitres, embroidered gowns, and sanctified theatricality. Yet amidst the pageantry walked Eiza González—graceful, still, and impossibly luminous. She arrived like a hush in a cathedral. There was no flamboyance in her step, no spectacle in her form. But somehow, she evoked divinity not through volume, but through vibration.
Eiza’s look offered something rare in an evening dominated by literal interpretations of Catholic aesthetics. Her beauty felt otherworldly not because it was adorned with saints or crosses, but because it whispered of something cosmically ancient and yet stunningly modern. In her monochrome white gown and slicked-back hair, she became a vessel of elegance. Yet it was her jewelry—designed by the visionary artisans of TASAKI—that served as her spiritual signature.
She wore a series of pearl necklaces that didn’t just layer—they aligned. They weren’t composed to impress, but to attune. The strands flowed across her collarbone like celestial meridians, as if charting constellations upon the landscape of her body. This wasn’t jewelry in the conventional sense. This was geometry, myth, and metaphysical intent rendered in white shimmer.
Where others echoed Renaissance altars or Byzantine mosaics, Eiza brought something radical to the gala: restraint. But hers wasn’t the cold austerity of minimalism for fashion’s sake—it was the elegant quiet of spiritual knowing. It was as if she had taken the theological charge of the evening and turned it inward, drawing on a personal liturgy not confined by religious iconography, but informed by the geometry of the stars.
With every pearl, she seemed to offer a breath. With every strand, a mantra. It was not a look to be devoured in seconds—it was one that invited silence, reflection, and awe.
Pearls as Silent Prophets: Redefining the Sacred Through Design
Pearls have always existed at the edge of divinity. They come from the sea, born of pressure and time, hidden within oyster shells like tiny sacred secrets. Across civilizations, they have carried symbolic weight—gifts from the gods, metaphors of purity, protectors of wisdom. In Christian lore, they are often seen as tears of the Virgin Mary, as tokens of grace and feminine spiritual power. But in the hands of TASAKI, and around the neck of Eiza González, pearls took on a new voice. One not bound by tradition, but liberated by intention.
Her jewelry did not borrow from the visual language of church relics or holy saints. It channeled a different kind of sacredness—one rooted in universal harmony. The symmetry of her pearls echoed mandalas, planetary orbits, sacred geometry. This was the design of temples not built by stone but by alignment. There was rhythm to her jewelry. It pulsed in patterns. It mirrored the quiet intelligence of nature—the Fibonacci sequence, the unfolding of petals, the spiral of galaxies.
In that geometry, a deeper kind of storytelling emerged. Her look asked us not to see God in stained glass or golden chalices, but to sense the divine in precision, in stillness, in the echo of space. TASAKI’s design was more than avant-garde. It was elemental. The pearls didn’t merely glisten. They glowed with suggestion. Each one a drop of moonlight. Each one a breath of the ocean. They weren’t placed upon her—they orbited her.
This departure from opulence did not diminish her power—it intensified it. Because when everything around is loud, it takes courage to be quiet. Eiza’s jewelry did not plead for attention. It existed in its own frequency. It trusted its audience to come closer. To feel, not just to see.
In this way, she wasn’t just wearing the future of jewelry—she was the future. A future where the sacred is reimagined. Where the body becomes a site of cosmic storytelling, and adornment becomes a meditation. Where the spiritual isn’t always Catholic, or Christian, or even religious—but instead, intuitive, cosmological, and completely personal.
Her appearance at the Met Gala was a vision of what faith in the modern age might look like. Not doctrine draped in velvet, but elegance shaped by alignment. Not hierarchy expressed through grandeur, but intimacy expressed through design.
Sacred Feminine Reborn: The Cosmology of Personal Myth
In Eiza González’s jewelry ensemble, we witnessed a quiet but powerful evolution of the sacred feminine. In contrast to the more performative interpretations of the Met Gala’s theme—capes that mimicked cardinals, gowns that referenced papal garb—Eiza chose to represent not the church, but the universe. Her jewelry did not echo relics passed down from saints—it constructed new myths in real-time.
This was the sacred feminine not as muse or martyr, but as oracle. The kind who doesn’t whisper scripture, but radiates resonance. The kind who holds no allegiance to institution, but aligns herself with energy, balance, and beauty. Eiza’s TASAKI pearls weren’t trinkets—they were tools. Instruments of intention. They crowned her not with hierarchy, but with harmony.
Her look was a sermon in modern mysticism. And in doing so, she rewrote the script for spiritual glamour. No longer must it be tethered to lace, crosses, or brocade. It can be clean. It can be sculptural. It can be born of geometry and guided by light. Her appearance invited us to ask: What if your body is already the sanctuary? What if your adornment is your liturgy?
And so it was. With her layered pearls draping her collarbone like sacred stanzas, González didn’t point toward religious tradition—she built a personal mythology. She appeared not as a character in someone else’s scripture, but as the author of her own. One who understood that jewelry, when worn with intention, becomes something more than beautiful. It becomes autobiographical.
In a world increasingly fragmented, her look was a hymn of wholeness. It didn’t seek approval. It offered presence. It reminded us that sacredness is not found in performance, but in precision. In how we hold ourselves. In how we align with our own inner constellations.
González's jewelry was a whisper across time. A signal to future generations that glamour and soul are not mutually exclusive. That in a pearl, you can hold both the moon and the memory. That in a necklace, you can wear your cosmology.
A Final Benediction — Jewelry as the Soul of Met Gala Storytelling
At the Met Gala 2018, jewelry transcended accessory—it became scripture. While the theme Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination invited attendees to draw from centuries of spiritual art and ecclesiastical design, the most powerful interpretations weren’t those that mimicked religious symbols but those that reimagined them with emotional clarity and philosophical intent. Jewelry, in this sacred space, operated as both relic and revelation.
Katherine Langford wore her antique rings and luminous bracelets like sacred fragments of a lost gospel, turning her youthful presence into something timeless and contemplative. Each piece she wore pulsed with historical gravity. Her jewelry didn’t decorate her look—it authored it. With red as her altar cloth and gold as her psalm, she emerged not just as a celebrity, but as a keeper of modern myth.
Amber Heard’s hands became votive objects. Dipped in gold, encircled with ornate rings, they echoed the hands of saints, prophets, and rebel queens. Her adornment wasn’t ornamental—it was insurgent. She reminded us that a woman’s hands can bless, command, and declare sovereignty all at once. Jewelry, for Heard, was armor. And she wore it with the grace of a high priestess walking a path she paved herself.
Katharine McPhee’s cascading necklaces created a personal iconostasis. In her layers, she carried echoes of cloistered abbeys and Baroque cathedrals. Her Virgins Saints & Angels pieces weren’t just worn—they were woven into a larger visual liturgy. McPhee didn’t just participate in fashion. She constructed a devotional offering, proving that reverence, when paired with design, becomes style at its most sacred.
And then came Eiza González—a whisper in the chaos. Her TASAKI pearls didn’t scream opulence. They glowed with quiet conviction, arranged like constellations drawn from the breath of the cosmos. She reframed the sacred as something sleek, elemental, and personal. Her jewelry looked less like an homage to the church and more like a hymn to inner divinity. In her, we saw the future of spiritual glamour—minimalist, mystical, and infinitely resonant.
Together, these women illuminated a powerful truth: that jewelry is not mere embellishment, but a vessel. It can house memory, metaphor, prayer, defiance. It carries ancestral energy, sacred geometry, and deeply personal mythology. At the 2018 Met Gala, jewelry was not the finishing touch—it was the soul of the narrative.
In an age where red carpet moments often vanish in the scroll, these looks endure because they asked more of their viewers. They invited us to slow down, to reflect, to listen. To see not just beauty, but belief. And in that quiet, gleaming space between style and story, jewelry emerged as the most potent medium of all—timeless, tactile, and profoundly human. In each pendant, every ring, across every strand of pearl, we were reminded that adornment—when steeped in intention—can become not only fashion, but faith.