It really is the year of Cillian Murphy—a fact confirmed recently when the Irish actor took home his first Academy Award for his leading role in Oppenheimer. The film, directed by Christopher Nolan, swept most of the major Oscars categories, and has well and truly placed Cillian Murphy in the ranks of cinematic icons. For the award ceremony, the actor wore a custom Atelier Versace suit.
What really put the finishing touch on Murphy’s tailored suit was a unique piece of jewellery. Like many other attendees, the actor leaned into the going trend for wearing a brooch. The return of this form of accessorising has been picking up speed for a while now, and the latest awards season is a high point. The Korean actor Teo Yoo, who starred in Celine Song’s Past Lives, wore a turtle design by Cartier that was meant as an homage to the memory of his beloved pet tortoise. Robert Downey Jr., another winner from the night, wore a devastatingly elegant Elsa Peretti design for Tiffany & Co.—a black silk flower on a diamond-crusted gold stem that’s named Amapola, Spanish for poppy.
Brooches are a lovely way of customising and differentiating an outfit. Especially when it’s worn with black tie tailoring which can, save for inventive styling, start to look a little same-y. See, for example, how Simu Liu wore a diamond brooch by De Beers not at the lapel of his Fendi tuxedo, but instead at the button closure.
Or the actor Sterling K. Brown who wore a slender Barette brooch, in platinum with diamonds and sapphires, circa 1919 from the Boucheron private collection on the chest pocket of his custom Dior Men tuxedo jacket. A touch like that gave the normally subtle tailoring detail a literally sparkling edge. Some credit has to be given here to the Los Angeles stylist Chloe Keiko, who put together the outfits of Teo Yoo, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown and Ke Huy Quan—all of them suitably brooch-ed up at the Oscars.
But the winning brooch at the Oscars is perhaps the one-off custom creation on the lapel of Cillian Murphy. Named the HS14, the 18-carat yellow gold brooch was designed by Hong Kong luxury house Sauvereign. The design is made up of eight concentric trapeziums, shapes taken from the inside components of Robert Oppenheimer’s world-changing project. And to create the piece itself, Bertrand Mak, the founder and chief creator of Sauvereign, turned to a rather unexpected talent. Not a jeweller, as you might expect, but instead to the Finnish master watchmaker Kari Voutilainen.
Voutilainen’s is a name that holds incredible weight and credence in the world of horology. He’s widely credited as one of the pioneers and legends of independent watchmakers—a niche that is red hot at the moment. Voutilainen made his name not just from crafting fine timepieces, but specifically for a level of sublime hand-finishing. On the HS14 brooch, this comes through in the form of sunburst guilloché, a highly precise decorative technique—most commonly seen in fine watches—that is a Voutilainen signature. It’s a deceptively simple touch, but one that adds subtle facets of reflective brilliance which echoes the Manhattan Project’s idea of a blindingly bright flash of beauty.
“I have known Kari since he won his first Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in 2007,” explains Mak of his choice of collaborator. The founder of Sauvereign was formerly a watch specialist at Christie’s, and clearly understands that the artisanal skills of the field can be beautifully applied in a slightly different context. “Strictly speaking, this brooch is jewellery. But because of the intricate guilloché, it’s in the realms of haute horlogerie too. In the watchmaking and collecting tribes, Voutilainen is synonymous with exquisite yet innovative engine-turning, and we know Kari never disappoints.”
The brooch itself was a beautiful addition to Murphy’s outfit at the Oscars, and one that perhaps signified the actor’s ambition for the night. After his win was announced, and he was photographed holding the statuette, did the synchronicity of colours come into focus. Mak comments: “My first reaction was how well the shimmer of the HS14 complemented the 24-carat gold-plated Oscar statuette!” Some encouragement, perhaps, that if you’re going for gold to bravely wear the sentiment on your sleeve—or lapel, as it were.
