Creepy, Crawly, and Totally Covetable

The Fashion World Has Caught the Bug

Renowned Tiffany & Co. designers like Jean Schlumberger and Elsa Peretti found their greatest inspiration in the natural world and the extraordinary creatures that inhabit it, creating stunning diamond butterflies, grasshoppers, and scorpions.

In her Fall / Winter 1938 collection, legendary French fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli presented two necklaces of clear Rhodoid acetate and polychrome-painted pressed-brass beetles, flies, dragonflies, bees, and ladybugs. Now, her enduring fashion house has maintained her design DNA, with current creative director Daniel Roseberry sending a statement-making golden beetle necklace down the runway, channeling the influence of ancient Egypt. Earlier this month, Chanel sent the Fall / Winter 2026 collection down the runway with ethereal dresses pinned with sparkling dual dragonfly brooches at the straps. 

Powerhouse jewelry maisons like Boucheron, Cartier, Chaumet, De Beers, Graff, and more have generated buzz around bejeweled bugs, as well as independent designers like Lauren Harwell Godfrey.

“I became inspired to create diamond insect jewelry after touring Marion Fasel’s Beautiful Creatures exhibition at the Natural History Museum,” Harwell Godfrey tells The Diamond Collective. “It was such a powerful reminder that insect motifs have existed in jewelry for centuries, across cultures and time.”

Butterflies, dragonflies, queen bees, honeybees, ladybugs, scarabs, and even the humble fly have buzzed into the joyful collections for her eponymous label, Harwell Godfrey. “What excited me most was the opportunity to translate that long history through the Harwell Godfrey design language. I’m always thinking about geometry, color, and symbolism, and insects offer such a rich world to explore within that framework.”

“I love that insects can feel both sturdy and delicate at the same time,” she says. “They are often incredibly colorful, a little strange, and deeply beautiful. There is something very compelling about that balance.”

Why Scarabs Were Sacred in Ancient Egypt

Jewelry in ancient Egypt held poignant cultural significance, symbolizing social status, power, and spiritual beliefs. Designs frequently featured resplendent colors, nature motifs, and symbols like the Ankh, the Eye of Horus, flies, and the scarab, each with deep-rooted meanings linked to mythology. For example, the beetle motif honors Khepri, the ancient Egyptian scarab-faced god, representing the rising sun and new beginnings.

In high demand, Harwell Godfrey’s swiftly sold-out scarab pendants were inspired by the designer’s travels to Egypt. “The scarab is an iconic symbol of rebirth and transformation, which makes it such a powerful talisman,” she explains. “The fly was a more unexpected inspiration. I noticed it appearing frequently in hieroglyphs and learned that in ancient Egypt, it was used in military medallions to represent bravery and persistence. I love that idea. It reframes something we might overlook into a symbol of strength.”

The Victorian Love Affair With Winged Creatures

During the Victorian era in Europe, spanning the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901, jewelry featuring dragonflies, butterflies, moths, bees, and more winged critters flourished in response to a newfound appreciation for nature. Queen Victoria had a deep love for nature, which helped popularize diamond insect jewelry.

In 1843, Queen Victoria named Garrard as the first official Crown Jeweler. Now, the historic jewelry house honors the Victorian design cues with the Enchanted Palace collection, inspired by the Victorian whimsy on show at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Conceived by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, the exhibition was considered a celebration of innovation and design, uniting talent from all over the world under one roof, including Garrard. 

Art Nouveau Embraced Nature’s Wilder Side

From 1895 to 1914, Art Nouveau jewelry emerged as a captivating artistic movement and stood in stark contrast to the Belle Époque style at the same time.

Characterized by its embrace of natural motifs and flowing, often organic forms, Art Nouveau jewelry celebrated botanical elements like flowers, leaves, and tendrils, while simultaneously embracing a more menacing side of nature, like wasps and serpents. With a strong Japanese influence, insect jewelry was infused with spindly curves and asymmetrical shapes, departing from the rigid structures of earlier periods.

Beetle Jewelry Has Always Had a Little Magic

In Ancient Egypt, the scarab beetle was associated with Khepri, the scarab-faced god of the rising sun, representing rebirth, regeneration, daily renewal, and transformation. Believed to generate itself spontaneously within the ground, the scarab beetle’s act of rolling large dung balls was linked with the sun’s daily movement across the sky each new day. Even in hieroglyphics, Khepri’s name is written with the symbol of the scarab. Used as protective objects, scarab amulets were used both in life and in burial practices. They were placed on the body to ensure safe passage into the afterlife.  

Following the cyclical patterns of the sun, all things come back around. In 1922, Egyptian jewelry permeated the collective consciousness once again when the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb ignited a global interest in Egyptian motifs, reimagined through a modern Art Deco lens with attention-grabbing diamonds, bringing beetles back to the forefront of jewelry.

But scarabs are hardly the only beetles to be represented in insect jewelry. Dor beetles, Japanese beetles, June beetles, rhinoceros beetles, stag beetles, and more have been transformed into baubles. Stag beetles, for instance, were thought to possess magical protection powers in Roman and Central European folklore. 

Jewelry designers like Bibi Van Der Velden, Harwell Godfrey, and Silvia Furmanovich have been bewitched by the beetle, while renowned jewelry houses like Boucheron, Cartier, Eugène Fontenay, and Tiffany & Co. have all incorporated the prolific insect throughout their works.

For over 160 years, Boucheron’s bestiary has been buzzing along. The French luxury jewelry Maison’s glistening Art Nouveau-inspired ruby-and-diamond stag beetle dates back to the late 19th century. 

While promoting his highly acclaimed film Dune at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Timothée Chalamet was announced as Cartier’s newest Friend of the House. In celebration, the actor attended the photocall, wearing a diamond and smoky quartz scarab brooch. Rich with history and symbolism, the futuristic Cartier Insecte Bionique brooch was designed by Lorenz Bäumer in 1999 to commemorate the transition into the new millennium. 

In 2025, Tiffany took center stage on the silver screen for Netflix’s Frankenstein, from Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro. For the first time, the jeweler brought together rare vintage diamond masterworks and modern high jewelry on the cinematic stage—made possible by the unparalleled depth and breadth of the Tiffany Archives. Mia Goth, who portrayed Victor Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth, her décolletage draped in the multi-strand Favrile Glass Scarab necklace.

The Bee Reigns Supreme

Leonardo DiCaprio hit the 2026 Oscars with a shining Boucheron bumblebee brooch pinned to his lapel, crafted from gold and diamonds. The pin was worn in homage to Bee:wild, the social movement committed to saving bees and other pollinators – a division of Re:wild, the environmental nonprofit organization DiCaprio co-founded in 2021. 

Few jewelry motifs have survived revolutions, empires, and changing tastes quite like the bee. An enduring symbol of power, immortality, ambition, perseverance, hard work, and unity, their existence is vital to sustaining life on Earth due to their essential contributions to food production, biodiversity, and the health of the environment. The humble bee is known as the worker of the animal kingdom, keeping our world blooming and fragrant. 

The bee’s presence in insect jewelry can be traced back to the Minoans and Ancient Egyptians before it was adopted again in the 19th century. In France, the bee is often associated with Napoleon Bonaparte, who adopted it as his imperial emblem as early as 1804, and it remained a defining symbol throughout his reign. 

The official jeweler to Napoleon, Parisian Maison Chaumet has applied the motif since the early 19th century. In 2011, it introduced the Bee My Love collection, which has since been rebranded as the Bee de Chaumet collection, with the spirit of a hive translated into a contemporary, glistening, and geometric visual language. 

The motif has spiked in popularity once again, with jewelry designers embracing the buzz. In the summer expression of Tiffany & Co.’s Blue Book 2026: Hidden Garden High Jewelry collection, Chief Artistic Officer Nathalie Verdeille found inspiration in Jean Schlumberger’s iconic Two Bees ring. The designer even created a yellow diamond iteration for his close friend and collaborator, Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon. 

The bee motif delves into a sophisticated melding of geometric patterns and organic movement in the form of honeycomb-inspired lattices. Oval-shaped diamonds are set within platinum and 18-karat yellow gold, transforming the archival design into an elegant, modern rendition. 

A transformable, detachable diamond drop pendant features a D-color, internally flawless oval-shaped 6.08-carat stone on a necklace featuring delicate diamond hexagonal honeycombs. The bee earrings include two D-color, internally flawless, Type IIa oval-shaped diamonds totaling over 10.12 carats with additional diamond accents.

And last but not least, a remarkable ring uplifts another D-color, internally flawless oval-shaped diamond, this time of 10.17 carats, framed by two sophisticated hidden figural bees. 

Cartier unveiled the third chapter of its stunning Nature Sauvage collection at the Ritz Paris during Paris Haute Couture Week in early 2025. Seeing the extraordinary in the everyday, Cartier represented the signature honeycomb of the beehive in tiers of white and yellow diamonds set in micro-wires, with a Fancy Intense yellow briolette-cut diamond bee landing on the tip. 

Zoë Saldaña gave the world a preview on the 2025 Golden Globes red carpet, and the piece clearly brought her luck as she brought home a win for her latest role.

The diamond industry is even working to protect the honeybee. Petra Diamonds is prioritizing ecosystems, livelihoods, and the honeybee through diamond mining. Globally, bee populations are facing an unprecedented crisis. Since the 1990s, researchers have recorded 25% fewer bee species worldwide, according to analyses of global occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Acknowledging that mining operations inevitably interact with surrounding ecosystems, Petra Diamonds has invested heavily in projects designed to help restore balance, and honeybees have become a focal point of that mission. 

The Butterfly Effect, in Diamonds

Across cultures, butterflies have symbolized rebirth, change, hope, liberation, and evolution. One of the oldest known motifs in jewelry, the butterfly has held a significant space in jewelry boxes for over 4,500 years. One of the first known unambiguous pieces of butterfly jewelry comes from Ancient Egypt, Fourth Dynasty, around 2600–2500 BCE. 

The butterfly’s biological transformation from a caterpillar to a winged insect- its metamorphosis holds a distinguished place in Japanese culture, with an emphasis on renewal and delicacy. With that comes the Mono no aware – a Japanese philosophical concept of impermanence. The ephemeral beauty of the butterfly is a poetic reminder of the fleeting nature of life, deeply resonating with the sentimentalism of the Victorian era.

Named after Queen Victoria, the favored jewelry of the time period found great inspiration in the natural world, with insect motifs like butterflies. The phenomenon took off like wildfire throughout Europe. The butterfly-collecting craze saw higher-end iterations created entirely of diamonds. Frequently mounted en tremblant on tiny watch springs behind the wings, jewelers made sure the butterfly would appear to flutter when the wearer moved for the most remarkably realistic rendition. 

From there, the Art Nouveau movement incorporated butterflies into diamond tiaras and bejeweled hair combs. By the 1820s, the activists of the American women’s suffrage movement were known as Iron Butterflies, catapulting the insect as the emblem of the movement. 

Now, Chopard Ambassador Georgina Rodríguez recently debuted the jeweler’s one-of-a-kind butterfly ring, consisting of 9.78 carats of marquise-, oval-, pear-, and brilliant-cut diamonds. For over 20 years, Mariah Carey has opted for diamond butterfly jewels from Chopard after the 1997 release of her beloved studio album, Butterfly. The legendary singer’s collaboration with Chopard is worthy of music royalty, manifesting in an extraordinary Happy Butterfly high jewelry collection in 2020 – a symbol shared by both the icon and the iconic jeweler. To this day, Carey’s affection for diamond butterfly jewelry has never waned. 

Van Cleef & Arpels has been creating diamond-embellished butterfly baubles since 1906, while the Graff Butterfly debuted in 1975, transforming a natural motif into a feat of technical innovation and beauty. Reflecting a form shaped over time, the De Beers’ Portraits of Nature High Jewelry collection honors the Monarch butterfly found in the delta of the Okavango River in Botswana, with light moving through white and fancy color diamonds, creating a sense of movement.

From ancient Egypt to the Victorian era, and Art Nouveau creations, renowned jewelry maisons, and independent designers like Cindy Chao have always incorporated the winged creature in their craft. As designs change, some symbols remain as poignant as the day of its inception in jewelry, never loosing its true meaning. 

During the Spider-Man press tour, Zendaya and Tom Holland tapped into their method-dressing talents with spider-themed jewels. Zendaya graced the red carpet in China for the premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, wearing an Atelier Versace gown from the Spring/Summer 2016 Couture collection, featuring sheer illusion cutouts with a black beaded web effect, draped in white fabric. 

She added an archival David Webb spider brooch from the 1990s pinned to her hip. Fully equipped with articulated legs for the most fabulous creepy-crawly effect, the spider brooch includes brilliant-cut diamonds and a detachable yellow sapphire.

Tom Holland sported a Pragnell spider brooch to the film’s UK premiere, pinned to the top of his burgundy tie. Featuring a Fancy Vivid blue-green diamond in its head, its hue is formulated by natural radiation deep within the Earth – similar to that of the radioactive bite that turns Peter Parker into the web-throwing superhero Spider-Man. A 5.14-carat untreated Lightning Ridge black opal takes the form of the spider’s abdomen, with diamond-set eyes and articulated legs. 

Before that, Zendaya wore a white Vetements suit and tie with a black dress shirt to the film’s New York City photocall, plus a pair of perfectly matched earrings. As the Queen of method-dressing, Zendaya wore Jacob & Co. earrings from the Web Collection, valued at $30,000. Black-plated 18-karat gold spider studs feature a white pearl connecting the arachnid to its web of 522 round-cut diamonds, totaling 6.39 carats. 

The Peter Parker-approved diamond earrings were the perfect callback to one of Zendaya’s Spider-Man-coded jewelry moments from 2021. While promoting Spider-Man: No Way Home nearly five years ago, Zendaya walked the red carpet in London, wearing an Alexander McQueen double-breasted gray crystal-embellished jacket and a similar pair of Jacob & Co. diamond web earrings. 

The “Jacob’s Web” earrings bcxhnoof two diamond spiders and large white pearls, with uhuxk 752 round-cut diamonds dnzwlrj an intricate spider web oek totaling 3.62 carats.

Scorpion Jewelry Has a Sting to It

Since the 2nd or 1st century BC, scorpions have been etched into intaglios carved from Greek and Roman stone. The scorpion has long been regarded as a protective amulet. The eight-legged arachnid, with its pair of pincers and segmented tail tipped with a venomous stinger, gained a reputation for healing patients who had been poisoned. Remedies were created by infusing scorpions in oil and herbs.

A recipe was published by the Medici Grand Duke Francesco I (died 1587) for an anti-poison oil effective against ‘all sorts of poisons ingested by mouth, stings and bites’. The obvious symbol of the Scorpio Zodiac sign, the critter was associated with water and was thereby thought to have a cooling remedy for a fever. 

Renowned Tiffany & Co. jewelry designer Elsa Peretti often turned to nature as her muse. She once noted, “Ideas come to me when I’m sitting outside and relaxed. Most of my designs are nature-inspired—for example, beans… as well as scorpions and snakes.” 

Inspired and fascinated by the scorpions found near Peretti’s home in Sant Martí Vell, Spain, the designer’s Scorpion necklace captures her ability to create sculptural, organic forms that are irresistibly tactile. Hoping for an example to review for her designs, Peretti enjoyed taking pictures of the creatures. Plenty were found in the archives among her collection of vintage polaroids. 

In 2017, she told Grazia Italia, “The scorpion and snake necklaces I designed for Tiffany & Co. seemed like a provocation to many, but for me, they were love for nature.”This striking necklace is meticulously crafted in sterling silver or gold with a detachable scorpion. Some iterations have been reimagined in diamonds for her 50th anniversary with Tiffany, with over 325 hand-set pavé diamonds for a bold, glittering homage to Peretti’s fascination with the natural world’s unexpected beauty.

The Strange Beauty of Insect Jewelry

From ancient Egyptian talismans to royal heirlooms and modern runway statements, insect jewelry has remained a powerful and enduring motif. These small creatures, often overlooked in nature, take on profound meaning when transformed into fine jewelry.

Rendered in diamonds, insect jewelry becomes something lasting, capturing fleeting beauty in a form that endures for generations. It’s this balance of delicacy and permanence that continues to draw designers, collectors, and wearers alike to the world of diamond insects.