Zendaya and Law Roach, her stylist, are known for pulling off the impossible.
The actor wore a silver robot suit from Thierry Mugler’s fall 1995 collection while promoting “Dune: Part Two” in 2024. While promoting “The Odyssey” this month, she wore a cream Schiaparelli gown, designed to resemble a marble sculpture, that had debuted on the runway hours earlier. At another event for the film, she wore a pair of earrings made from gold discs from ancient Iran.
The last one of those rarefied pieces of fashion has sparked debate in the world of archaeology and cultural preservation. Some archaeologists saw the repurposing of ancient artifacts as fashion as cause for concern and as disrespectful to the cultures they belong to, or as an act of “fetishizing the past,” as the archaeologist and creator Dr. Z said, which could help drive the antiquities black market. Additionally, critics worried about the origins of the artifact, which they believed was obtained through looting and colonial plunder.
Earlier this month, Zendaya, who is known for theme dressing, wore an ivory halter gown with an attached head scarf from the French label Jacquemus while promoting her latest film in London. She accessorized with statement disc gold-and-diamond earrings whose origins date to the first millennium B.C., according to Barron London, a gallery specializing in rare jewels and stones, which posted a photo of Zendaya wearings its earrings on its Instagram page.
On its website, the gallery highlights a pair of Ziwiye gold medallion plaques, which it says were mounted with diamonds by Glenn Spiro, a London-based jeweler.
In a statement to The Guardian, the gallery said it had acquired the earrings in 2025 from Spiro, whose Materials of the Old World collection featured ancient artifacts converted into jewelry.
Representatives for Zendaya, Law Roach, Barron and Spiro did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The gold discs are believed to have been excavated in the 1940s outside the Ziwiyeh Castle in northwestern Iran, as part of a trove of other artifacts from the ancient world.
Items from the Ziwiye hoard, as the artifacts became known collectively, are on view at museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The issue, according to Peter Edwell, a professor of history and archaeology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is that this is “material that’s very problematic in terms of where it’s come from.” This is true of thousands of artifacts found globally, particularly those coming from the Middle East in this period, he added.
“The archaeological origins of it are really hazy, and we just don’t really know what happened,” he said. “And probably, I think, plunder and looting is what happened.”
Red carpet dressing has, in recent years, been a sport of celebrity one-upmanship. Stylists have leaned on theme dressing and have aimed to acquire fashion deep cuts for their clients to generate conversation. But the ancient artifacts are a relatively new addition and a show stopper.
When stars wear clothing with deep history, it is an effort to place “them directly in that world, and they add to that story,” Edwell added.
This was not the first time historical artifacts have made their way to the earlobes, neck or wrist of a famous person. At the same London promotional event, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya’s co-star in “The Odyssey,” wore a diamond-encrusted watch from Bulgari that featured an ancient Roman coin as its case. For the premiere of “Wuthering Heights” this year, Margot Robbie wore Cartier’s Taj Mahal diamond necklace that once belonged to Elizabeth Taylor, a gift from her husband Richard Burton. The stone was given by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahangir to his son Shah Jahan, who ordered the construction of the Taj Mahal, in the 17th century.
The choice of jewelry may have been viewed as insensitive amid the U.S. war in Iran. “Iran is being actively bombed,” said Annelise Baer, an archaeologist and producer based in Los Angeles, adding that the backlash could also be a result of the racism the actor and her fellow “Odyssey” co-star Lupita Nyong’o have been subjected to since the cast for the adaptation of the Greek epic was announced.
Barron acknowledged the tense atmosphere in a statement to The Guardian, adding that, at a time when Iran is viewed through the lens of contemporary politics, “we hope these earrings can also remind audiences of the country’s profound cultural, artistic and historical legacy.”
Some comments on the original Barron post did not express opposition to the choice of accessory.
Baer posted one of the early commentaries on the decision to include precious artifacts in a celebrity’s look. Ultimately, she saw the mainstreaming of ancient artifacts as a positive thing, a position that drew backlash on social media, prompting her to disable the comments.
Baer saw a silver lining to the dust-up.
“I am ultimately glad that this has really brought the issue of antiquities ownership and the ethics — provenance, looting, colonialism — immediately to the public attention,” she said.
Many pieces of valuable art and stones were acquired illegally throughout history. Items looted in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries have, through colonial plunder, made their way into famous art and history institutions such as the British Museum in London. Recent calls for repatriating the artifacts have been heeded by some countries and their governments, and some institutions have begun returning the stolen artifacts.
Baer argued that these conversations ought to happen in the public sphere instead of just among museum boards of directors. “In the 21st century,” she said, “we are still dealing with the ramifications and the repercussions of what happened in the 20th century.”
