Brooches Are on the Move

“The decorative pins are still seen on men’s lapels, but they also may turn up pretty much anywhere on clothing these days.

 

Brooches have come a long way from the simple metal, flint or bone fasteners made by Bronze Age humans.

 

“They were not originally fashion items, but practical objects used in daily life,” said Gain Choi, chief executive of Rich Lab Grown Diamonds in Seoul.

 

Over the centuries, however, the pieces became decorative as well as functional and by the mid-20th century, were mostly worn by women. Recently, though, the trend changed again.

 

For example: “Since the 2000s, men in Korea started to wear brooches as fashion items, particularly influenced by K-pop,” Ms. Choi continued. “Artists like BTS and G-Dragon played a role in popularizing them as part of modern styling,” an example of Hallyu, the wave of Korean culture gone global.

 

Some men, wherever they might be, have not had to look far to find a brooch. “A couple of years ago we started seeing men using their wife’s or girlfriend’s brooches for themselves,” said Lucia Silvestri, Bulgari’s jewelry executive creative director. “Men appreciate the creativity. When we started seeing men wearing brooches, we have been making more designs.”

 

Ms. Silvestri said brooches with a touch of color update what might otherwise be just a silver or gold pin, even if the design has some sparkle from diamonds. “It’s very cool and more fun to have colors,” she said, and gave as an example the sapphire highlighting the 18-karat white gold and diamond brooch that the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, a Bulgari ambassador, wore in late March to the jewelry brand’s party in Bollate, Italy, on the outskirts of Milan. The event introduced Bulgari’s most recent high jewelry collection, Eclettica High-End, which features brooches such as an 18-karat pink gold design with a 1.01-carat round diamond, tourmalines in several colors and turquoise accents.

 

Suh Soo Koung of Soo Style Kompany, a Seoul business that works with several K-pop groups and artists, also advocates color in brooches.

 

To rizz up the white suit that the singer Sung Si Kyung wore to a Tiffany & Company event in Seoul, she pinned on his lapel two of the jeweler’s signature Bird on a Rock brooches by Jean Schlumberger — one with a blue tanzanite “rock”; the other, green tourmaline.

 

Ms. Suh wrote that she also likes to mix things up, featuring brooches in ornament collections like the ones she once arranged for the eight members of the South Korean boy band Stray Kids and some of the 11 members of the Japanese boy band JO1. “Rather than focusing on a single brooch, we layered multiple brooches and decorative elements,” she noted, referring to chains and badges, ”so the looks would feel more dimensional and stand out more effectively during the choreography and movement onstage.”

 

In Los Angeles, the stylist Anastasia Walker has updated brooches by substituting other jewelry pieces and often liberating them from the lapel.

 

“A traditional brooch worn in the traditional way,” she said, “is not the best example of the personal style” of her clients, including the American singer Shaboozey and the Canadian actor Hudson Williams, a star of the Netflix smash “Heated Rivalry.” So for Mr. Williams’s appearance at a Lunar New Year party in New York City, “we used a David Webb earring and pinned it to a neck sash that was meant to be a belt but we used it as a necktie,” Ms. Walker said.

 

Such variation isn’t limited to actors or musicians with stylists, however. As Myungvin Kim, the community manager at the Lilion Café in Seoul’s trendy Hannam-dong neighborhood, said, “I like experimenting with placement — not just on the lapel, but also on the back of the collar, the lower part of a shirt or on a bag.”

 

Mr. Kim, 30, said he became interested in brooches relatively recently, seeing them on Pinterest and Instagram: “I was looking for something that could clearly stand out and add character to my style.”

 

Then, browsing in a vintage shop, he found one he liked — a 1950s silver-plated swirl set with faux pearls, by the costume jewelry brand Trifari. “I usually wear a brooch when my outfit feels minimal or a bit too uniform. I think even a small piece can completely shift the mood of an outfit.”

 

It could also make a personal point. At the Academy Awards in March, where several fashion critics noted the number of “bros in brooches,” Leonardo DiCaprio wore a diamond-accented brooch of a bee — the Abeille design from Boucheron’s archives, which has two garnet cabochons as the bee’s eyes and yellow and black enamel accents.

 

The choice, a Boucheron representative said, was meant to highlight Mr. DiCaprio’s work as a founding board member of Re:wild, an environmental nonprofit organization, and its effort to save bees, called Bee:wild.

 

But has the trend become so prevalent that brooches are in danger of becoming yesterday’s style? “I don’t see them going anywhere,” Ms. Walker said. “I think in the last two or three years men are taking more risks in fashion and becoming more experimental with jewelry.”

 

Claire Choisne, Boucheron’s creative director, emailed a reason for the trend. “When society begins to question rigid gender roles, stylistic borders start to dissolve as well,” she wrote. “Men today feel less constrained by old expectations, and that opens the door to a much richer form of self-expression. In that sense, I don’t see this as a passing moment. It reflects a deeper cultural evolution where men and women are moving closer in terms of freedom, rights, and identity.

 

”I truly believe this movement will only grow stronger in the years to come, and it’s something the entire industry should celebrate. It’s a wonderful evolution, opening up new forms of expression and creativity.”

 

Besides, as Ms. Walker pointed out: “a brooch can bring a ‘wow.’”” [1]

 

1. Brooches Are on the Move. Beckett, Kathleen.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. May 10, 2026.