The stars may all be out tonight at the 2024 Met Gala, but hardly anybody is shining as bright as Demi Moore. In Cartier High Jewellery and a Harris Reed confection, the actor reminds us that she is always one to watch. “I had been wanting do something with Harris Reed for quite awhile, and being with Cartier along with this year’s theme it felt like a magical combination and collaboration,” Moore tells Vogue. “All I can say is it all fell into perfect alignment.”
Tonight, Moore becomes the first person to wear Cartier’s High Jewellery collection, Nature Sauvage, which will formally launch at the end of May. She is debuting the Chloris, a formidable necklace and earrings combo that sets the stage for the jewellery brand’s full collection later this month. What better place to tease a sneak peek than the Met Gala?
The Chloris necklace features platinum and diamond encrusted spirals with emerald centres, and a matching diamond and emerald earrings. The necklace contains 7.87 carats of emeralds, while the earrings have 2.25. Named for the Greek nymph Chloris, goddess of spring, the jewels are configured to look like dandelion seeds swept away by the wind.
A spectacular jewellery-scape requires an equally impressive dress, and Harris Reed was more than up to the task. “In the process of Harris creating my dress we sent measurements of the necklace which he had made into a life size paper copy so he could make sure the dress and jewellery complimented each other seamlessly,” Moore says.
The dress was inspired by look eight from Reed’s namesake fall 2024 collection. The velvet dress features a double Duchess silk panel adorned with massive pink peonies procured from dead stock wallpaper. Reed designed the dress so that it would begin to decay as it traveled down Moore’s body, the wilting flowers made of hand-painted silk organza. “The other pieces of [the dress] have over 5,000 to 6,000 hours of hand embroidery,” the Nina Ricci creative director says.
“I thought a lot of people were going to be looking at this year’s theme in a way that everything should be very delicate and it should be all about lace, and see-through, and falling apart,” Reed tells Vogue. “I wanted to take the opposite approach. I wanted her to look like she was almost in full bloom for one split second on the red carpet before this flower then starts like any flower to decay.”
Reed was particularly inspired by the thorns in the garden, hence the circumference of thorns that surround Moore. “That was so important to kind of show these almost thorns around her because so many beautiful things are spiky to the touch,” they say.
Despite her regular presence in front rows around the world, Moore has only graced the Met on four other occasions. Her first year, 2001, she came as Donna Karan’s guest, wearing a one-shoulder gold dress. She didn’t walk the Met steps again until 2010, where she again opted for metallics, wearing a strapless gunmetal number with a thigh-high slit. And in 2011, she celebrated the oeuvre of Alexander McQueen in a feathered dress with an equally audacious headpiece. She last attended the Met in 2019, on the arm of Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, and wore a floor-length tuxedo dress with a plunging V-neck.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
