Not Your Grandmother’s Brooch — How the Unlikely Accessory Is Making an Impact With Young Shoppers

Among the fashion trends that have popped up this year, an unlikely accessory has made a major comeback: the brooch.

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Brooches have a rich history in the jewelry world dating back to the Bronze Era, serving as an accessory or fastener. In modern times, the style has been embraced by the Ladies Who Lunch crowd, female politicians and older generations, while being largely overlooked by younger people.

In the last year, however, young people’s perception of brooches has flipped on its head, with many younger shoppers picking up the vintage accessory and styling it in myriad ways.

“We have our traditional woman who will buy a brooch and she wears it on her lapel or on her sweater for Christmas time, but it’s the girl who is also maybe styling a scarf as a top and she’s clipping the brooch on the scarf to close it, or the guy that wants to dress up his suit and put something on his lapel,” said Noelle Sciacca, senior lead of women’s fashion and strategic partnerships at The RealReal. “We’re definitely seeing more and more people gravitate toward it, especially the younger demographic — it’s shifting and they’re becoming more and more interested.”

Sciacca said The RealReal has seen an uptick in its brooches category over the last two years. She stated that the category’s “obsessions” — which is when customers like a product on the platform’s website — has increased 24 percent year-over-year.

This growing interest among younger demographics has been seen across the accessories industry, both by independent labels and within the secondary market, which is full of vintage options from luxury labels.

Jewelry designer Michael Saiger, who is the founder and creative director of Miansai, has received a growing number of requests over the last year for bespoke brooches, which he said have been for editorial purposes or celebrity clients.

“It’s the new update to the classic pin,” he said. “We used to do a lot of vintage pins. You can put it on to your bag or you can put on as a lapel. We started doing that kind of stuff more so as a brooch and adding stones to it.”

Young people are using brooches to fashion scarves as tops, and to accessorize bags, headbands or wristbands.

At 280-year-old Sotheby’s, Frank Everett, vice chairman of jewels in the Americas, is encouraging the auction house’s clients to style with brooches to give them a modern-day update.

“As a jewelry designer, I think it’s the truest form of their art because it’s a sculpture that you just pin somewhere,” he said. “It doesn’t have to fit a finger or hang from an ear. It doesn’t have to be 16 inches to fit the neck — it’s free form. They really get to just create something beautiful out of precious material. That’s one of the most attractive things about brooches.”

Brooches have always been a popular style at Sotheby’s, but are getting more attention now that more people are looking to auctions for the accessory, Everett said.

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He stated Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are two go-to brands for brooches given their vast assortments and that floral brooches are perennially popular among auction clients, while Art Deco styles are popular options among men.

Van Cleef & Arpels is also a top brooch performer on The RealReal. Sciacca stated interest in brooches from the luxury jeweler has increased 223 percent year-over-year. She also stated unbranded brooches consist of a quarter of the resale platform’s brooch sales and that brooches made with emeralds, onyx and diamonds are popular among customers.

“We had that quiet luxury boom where everything was minimalist, like head-to-toe even with jewelry, and our data and our sales demand are showing that there’s a shift out of that,” Sciacca said. “Or people are taking those pieces that are more minimal and styling and layering the more bold pieces, so brooches are the perfect way to go about that.”

Increased interest in brooches can also be credited to the red carpet, Sciacca and Everett agreed. This past awards season embraced brooches in a major way, with virtually all male celebrities walking the red carpet with the accessory complementing their suit.

There was Oscar winner Cillian Murphy wearing a bespoke geometric brooch from Hong Kong-based jeweler Sauvereign, Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan wearing a pair of chevron Cartier brooches made with sapphires and diamonds, and Oscar nominee Colman Domingo wearing a David Yurman high jewelry starburst pendant at the Academy Awards, to name a few.

“We could not have seen more of them during the red carpet season,” Everett said. “I don’t think there was anyone that wasn’t wearing them, so I hope that trend keeps going and that it’s not so much a trend, so that we get into an area where guys are just going to wear jewelry. The goal is that we don’t call any jewelry men’s jewelry , it’s just he’s wearing jewelry. The crossover has started and hopefully it’ll just continue to strengthen and we’ll get more young people interested in it.”

Saiger explained his brooch requests have been a mix of modern and classic, such as taking an antiquated style and updating it with gemstones or designing it with mixed metals.

“It’s driven by this reimagined vintage kind of fashion,” he said about his brooch requests. “That’s going to play a large role in it. We have a long time to go until [brooches] become way more modern. But right now, it’s like a mix of the two.”

Saiger is adding a few brooches to his assortment, though most brands, including Miansai, don’t offer them in their main collections. That’s part of the reason that the secondhand market has become the go-to resource for the brooch customer.

“Hardly anyone makes them anymore,” Everett said. “If you’re really into brooches and you want to collect interesting things, if you go now to any of the big houses and ask for a current assortment brooch, they won’t have many options. If you want to really get interesting things, you have to look at the secondary market. You have to look at auctions.”

Be it vintage or new brooches, the accessory is expected to hold its resonance going into the holidays, and certainly for the next awards season.

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