Gold Against Skin

Emily Ratajkowski wearing jewelry is a specific problem, which is that you stop looking at the jewelry. Jacquie Aiche’s work deserves better than that—the pieces are genuinely beautiful, fine gold-and-diamond work that exists in its own register, unhurried and precise—but when Emily is the one wearing it, the hierarchy shifts. She’s wearing a necklace that Aiche named after Elizabeth Taylor, and standing next to that reference without flinching takes a specific kind of presence.

Aiche’s aesthetic sits somewhere between bohemian and serious. Layered gold, embedded stones, pieces that look excavated rather than manufactured. The work doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates, settles into the skin, starts to look like it was always there. It’s the kind of jewelry that attracts people who have strong feelings about jewelry rather than people who just want to signal that they spent money.

I’m basically obsessed with diamonds, Emily says in an interview with the designer. There’s a necklace Jacquie named the Elizabeth Taylor. It’s so timeless and specific. I believe the obsession entirely—she wears the conviction the same way she wears the jewelry, as if wanting something openly is simply more efficient than pretending otherwise.

The combination of Ratajkowski and Aiche makes sense in a way that transcends the usual celebrity-brand arrangement. They’re both interested in the same tension: adornment as something worn against the body, not hung over it. The shoot understands that.