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When It Comes to Red-Carpet Jewelry, 'Elegance Is Refusal'

Carine Roitfeld, the fashion editor and muse, prefers to wear her own jewelry. “I hate that when you are at Cannes, you see these actresses and you know they are paid to wear jewelry,” she said. “I don’t like that.”Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Sumptuous jewels became famously associated with the Cannes Film Festival thanks to Elizabeth Taylor.

One day in May 1957, the screen goddess was doing morning laps in the pool at La Fiorentina, the Cap Ferrat villa she was renting during the festival. The story goes that Ms. Taylor, clad in a swimsuit and an antique diamond tiara, paused in the pool to accept a surprise gift from Mike Todd, her third husband: an impressive Burmese ruby parure by Cartier. Ms. Taylor is said to have put on the dazzling set and continued with her exercise, and news of her bejeweled aquatic session spread beyond the Côte d’Azur.

Cannes also was where the current method of fine-jewelry promotion — brands loan and gift pieces and even pay celebrities — was set in motion in the early ’90s. Sharon Stone, then a festival fixture, revived Ms. Taylor’s brand of Old Hollywood opulence by adorning her Valentino and Vera Wang gowns with sumptuous Van Cleef & Arpels and Harry Winston jewels.

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Elizabeth Taylor at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957, the year she essentially created the festival’s reputation for bling.Credit...Ullsten Bild, via Getty Images

Today, Cannes vies with the Oscars when it comes to fine jewelry, primarily as a result of Chopard’s role as a festival partner. The Swiss luxury brand, which designed the festival’s Palme d’Or award, has used the event to elevate its reputation beyond the watches and jewelry field, annually bestowing the Trophée Chopard on two emerging stars.

By lending jewels to a bevy of A-list actors, Chopard also motivated its rivals to compete for recognition at the festival. So every beach party, yacht soirée and Palais des Festivals premiere is awash with borrowed bling.

Many observers feel there is an overabundance of jewels at Cannes as well as other red carpet affairs. And an increasing number of high-profile women who could easily get their hands on quality diamonds — not to mention rubies on a par with those Ms. Taylor flaunted — refrain from doing so. Instead, they wear their own jewelry.

Their individualist attitude evokes one of Coco Chanel’s famous maxims: “Elegance is refusal.”

Carine Roitfeld is among this group. Because of her positions as editor of her own CR Fashion Book magazine and global fashion director of Harper’s Bazaar — as well as, for 10 years, curator of the fashion show for the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS charity gala on May 19 in Cannes — her friends Azzedine Alaïa, Karl Lagerfeld and Riccardo Tisci are ready to create custom red carpet finery. And haute joaillerie brands including Harry Winston (a Cinema Against AIDS sponsor) would be happy to deliver to her Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc suite enough dazzling embellishment to see her through the festival.

But Ms. Roitfeld, talking recently at The Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa, said: “I am very lucky because I have a lot of friends in fashion and they make special couture dresses just for me. But I hate to borrow anything. And I hate that when you are at Cannes, you see these actresses and you know they are paid to wear jewelry. I don’t like that. I am paid by no one. I pay myself.”

Ms. Roitfeld’s adornment was as provocative as her comment. As usual, she wore pieces from her own jewelry wardrobe that see her through day and evening, including Christian Dior white gold diamond hoops (she wears two in each earlobe hole), a sexy Elsa Peretti scorpion pendant (the astrological sign of her partner, Christian Restoin) and a weighty ring displaying a “couple making love,” she explained. (The latter two pieces are both yellow gold.)

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Ms. Roitfeld’s scorpion pendant by Elsa Peretti. The scorpion is the astrological sign of her partner, Christian Restoin.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

She acknowledged that about 12 years ago, when she began her work with amfAR, she borrowed the odd piece. Since then she has worn her own jewels.

“I don’t own so much,” she said, describing her collection as a mix of inherited items (like a six-carat diamond her Russian grandmother smuggled out of Moscow in the hem of a winter coat); tokens from friends like Victoire de Castellane, Dior’s head of fine jewelry; and wearable sculpture by artists including César Baldaccini, Salvador Dalí and Ms. Peretti that she acquired at auctions. “I bought art jewels when they were not too expensive,” she said. “That sort of thing is fun when you find it and it is not too expensive.”

Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue and Condé Nast’s artistic director, has integrated fine jewelry into the look (Prada dresses, Chanel suits, flesh-toned Manolo Blahnik footwear) she habitually wears. Her signature is a choker-style collet necklace composed of graduated semiprecious stones. The London jeweler S.J. Phillips has sold Ms. Wintour at least three versions of this antique neckwear style — in aquamarine, amethyst and one mingling brown and pink topaz — and she sometimes wears them in combinations.

Similarly, Sofia Coppola — director of the 2013 jewel heist movie “The Bling Ring” — has made a striking pair of Verdura cuffs her adornment hallmark. Charlotte Rampling and Rooney Mara made an impact during the 2016 awards season by wearing little or no jewelry aside from their own rings. Similarly, Patricia Arquette braved the 2015 Oscar campaign trail by mixing her own bold jewels with the occasional borrowed accessory.

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Rooney Mara at the 2016 Academy Awards. The actress wore little or no jewelry during the awards season.Credit...Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

And then there is a roster of contemporary nobles who buy modern designs for themselves rather than simply relying on the family trove. This camp includes the Duchess of Cambridge, who has been acquiring accessibly priced jewels by London designers including Annoushka Ducas since her marriage to Prince William in 2011. And Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser, a wife of the former emir of Qatar, often flaunts her own jaw-dropping gems by Cartier, Chatila and David Webb, among other legendary names — one of the reasons she was added to Vanity Fair’s International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame in 2015.

For the stylist Elizabeth Saltzman, it would be a breeze to borrow jewels for Vanity Fair’s annual Cannes party, scheduled this week at Hôtel Du Cap. Ms. Saltzman, who also is one of British Vanity Fair’s contributing editors, is beloved by jewelers for her skill with celebrity clients.

But when it comes to her own look, Ms. Saltzman relies on seven vintage ornaments she inherited from her mother, Ellin Saltzman, Saks Fifth Avenue’s fashion director in the ’80s, with a signature look that included David Webb and Verdura jewels. Today, Ms. Saltzman wears the family heirlooms with pride and she echoes Ms. Roitfeld’s belief that jewelry — the most personal of all accessories — conveys its wearer’s identity. “I have never borrowed jewelry, just like I have never borrowed clothing,” Ms. Saltzman said.

“Of course, I like the fantasy of wearing something extraordinary but not the drama involved,” she added. “When I go out, I want to be able to dance up a storm and not worry about my earrings swinging off.”

This week, hundreds of armed French police officers and plainclothes security guards are patrolling Cannes in an effort to deter missing jewelry of another kind: the thefts that have plagued festival week since the 2013 Carlton robbery. (A thief took Leviev jewels worth $136 million, one of Europe’s most costly robberies.)

According to the jewelry consultant Emily Goad, most brands make loans to celebrities, socialites and influencers without bothering to insure the jewelry. “At big events like Cannes there is always a lot of uninsured jewelry floating around,” she said, noting that the additional police presence in recent years has reinforced brands’ cavalier attitudes.

Paola Jacobbi, Vanity Fair Italy’s senior entertainment editor, also wears vintage gems inherited from her grandmother rather than borrowing pieces from her Chopard and De Grisogono contacts. “Forget it ,” she said. “I would lose it.”

But she also believes that loaning jewelry can be a positive way for brands to increase their visibility as well as raise awareness of ethical issues. For example, Penélope Cruz promoted sustainably sourced gold by wearing Chopard’s Palme Verte collection at the festival last year. The pieces are made of gold produced from South American mines supported by the Alliance for Responsible Mining, a Colombian charity and developer of the Fairmined standard. Palme Verte also uses diamonds from mines certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council, a not-for-profit, certification organization based in London.

Sometimes, though, a piece of jewelry is just too fine to turn down.

While she doesn’t borrow very often, Carol Woolton, British Vogue’s jewelry editor, said special pieces sometimes catch her eye — like the £600,000 Chopard sapphire earrings she wore to a British Academy of Film and Television Arts party in 2015.

“Occasionally I borrow because it can give your look a kick,” she said. “But the piece has to evoke your own style and it has to fit. Borrowing a jewel is a big responsibility.

“And if the pieces exceed $100,000, you have to not mind having a security guard with you the whole night.”

A version of this article appears in print on   in The New York Times International Edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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