Long associated with tradition and occasion dressing, the brooch is experiencing a clear resurgence. Bold takes were spotted on Hollywood’s most notable men this past awards season, while the latest ready-to-wear shows were awash with statement iterations and inventive styling. What was once decorative now reads as deliberate, becoming the piece that steals the focus.

Brooches began life with a far more practical role. In the Bronze Age, fibulae (Latin for “clasps” or “pins”) were used to fasten garments, functioning much like a safety pin to hold cloth in place.

By the medieval period, they had developed into more complex forms, most notably the penannular brooches worn across Celtic and Viking cultures – open rings with a movable pin designed to secure heavy fabrics, their surfaces often worked with intricate patterns that nodded to rank, wealth and regional identity.

By the time European dress tipped into its most ornate phases – from the Baroque through to the Georgian era – the brooch had shifted more firmly into the role of ornament. Men pinned gold and diamond-set pieces to coats and hats, using them as small but unmistakable markers of status. Napoleon Bonaparte was among those to adopt the practice, incorporating brooch-like ornaments into his imperial wardrobe. One such piece, long thought lost after the Battle of Waterloo, resurfaced centuries later and sold for around US$4.4 million at auction in Geneva last year, underscoring just how much symbolic and material weight these accessories can carry.

As tailoring became more restrained over the course of the 19th century, the brooch slipped out of regular use, replaced by smaller, more discreet accessories that better suited the mood of the time. It resurfaced in the early 20th century, particularly during the art deco period, when diamond-set pieces once again found their place within formal dress. Around the same moment, Indian maharajas were reworking the idea on an altogether grander scale, wearing elaborate gem-set turban ornaments known as sarpech – distinct in form, yet driven by the same instinct to use jewellery as an expression of identity and power.

The impulse hasn’t disappeared – it’s simply resurfaced, now playing out across the red carpet. A sea of decorated jackets across the 2026 celebrity circuit quickly earned the accessory a new moniker: the “bro brooch”. Leading the charge, Pedro Pascal pinned a silk and feather Chanel brooch against a white tuxedo shirt on the 98th Academy Awards red carpet, introducing texture and a sense of softness to otherwise clean tailoring. That same night, Lionel Richie opted for an intricate diamond double-clip brooch from Tiffany & Co., while Jeremy Allen White chose a more minimalist art deco diamond bow bar for the Actor Awards (previously the SAG Awards) – both pieces having been sourced via The Back Vault, a New York-based platform specialising in signed estate and antique jewellery. Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, was spotted at the Oscars wearing a vintage bee brooch, made in 1964 by Boucheron, reinforcing the pull towards archival pieces rich with history.

For some, the approach was more subversive. Michael B. Jordan placed a custom David Yurman high jewellery brooch at the back of his jacket collar on Oscars night – easy to miss at first glance, but entirely intentional – a move he carried through to the Vanity Fair after-party, where – fresh from winning Best Actor – he wore not one but three brooches across a sharply cut brown suit. It’s a direction he’s been building on: at the 2023 Academy Awards, he wore a pair of Tiffany & Co. Bird on a Rock brooches on his lapel – originally designed in the 1960s and now considered one of the most iconic jewellery designs of the 21st century.