Cece Jewellery’s Cece Fein-Hughes spent her early childhood roaming Dartmoor, sitting by the fire in her grandmother’s 16th-century thatched cottage, and listening to folkloric tales of an unmarked grave nearby, where flowers would mysteriously appear. “I draw constantly from the moors – their drama, romance and wilderness,” says the art historian-turned-fine jeweller, who is best known for her symbolism-steeped signet rings and pendants, all engraved and hand-painted with Champlevé enamel.
It sounds… familiar? Given the parallels between the London-based jeweller’s spiritual home and the universe of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, it tracks that she was contacted by Andrew Mukamal, longtime stylist of Margot Robbie – soon to become the most controversial, Chanel costume jewellery-clad Cathy to appear on screen in Emerald Fennell’s blockbuster adaptation – to create a signet ring for the film’s promo tour, which kicked off this week.
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For anyone in need of a SparkNotes-inspired recap: Robbie plays Catherine Earnshaw, left eternally doomed by her love for the roguish, revenge-driven “fiend”, Heathcliff. “I was drawn to the love story itself and the landscape that shapes it,” Fein-Hughes says of the starting point for the bespoke commission, worn to signify the love between Cathy and Heathcliff (played in Fennell’s version by a gold tooth-sporting, mutton-chopped Jacob Elordi). The jeweller also crafted a matching design for Margot’s main man, ensuring they are forever united by their bling.
Though some purists have griped about historical inaccuracies when it comes to costume design (a wedding dress inspired by Victorian and 1950s fashion! Giant Gothic crosses! A Swiss peasant costume from the mid-19th century!), Fein-Hughes, at least, looked to the period the tragedy is actually set in for inspiration. “It is renowned for its opulence and romantic grandeur, which is the dream dress code for any jewellery designer.” In Cece Jewellery’s signature symbolic style, the pieces feature two hand-enamelled skulls locked in an eternal embrace. The bones sit in a tangle of thorns, to symbolise both bittersweet love and the harshness of nature. They are also inscribed with a Brontë quote (“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”), Cathy and Heathcliff’s initials, and “1847-2026” – a nod to the year the book was published and that of the new film’s release.
Fein-Hughes has worked on bespoke commissions for a whole host of A-listers, including a signet ring for Taylor Swift (hand-enamelled with a portrait of her Ragdoll cat Benjamin Button and gifted to her by BFF Gigi Hadid), and her brand’s first cross design, created in honour of Justin Bieber’s son, Jack. But this is her first thematic commission designed specifically for red-carpet season.
Robbie of course, is an original progenitor of red carpet “method dressing”, with the vintage Chanel tweed, custom Versace power suits and sequined Schiaparelli she wore on her Barbie press tour all nodding to the doll’s original outfits. Just one day into press for Wuthering Heights, she resembled a time-travelling Brontë heroine, pairing her Cece Jewellery signet ring and Heart Diamond Drop earrings with a Roberto Cavalli minidress and tumbling loose ringlets. For an apparence on Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, she wore a witchy lace Alexander McQueen dress topped off with aviator sunglasses. Robbie’s bespoke accessory only reinforces the lengths she and Mukamal are going to to ensure Fennell’s vision translates to the red carpet – one symbolic signet ring at a time.
