Tiffany & co. has only donated jewelry to four films, one of which is Frankenstein. The news has now broke of the collaboration, and Mia Goth was wearing a Tiffany necklace on the red carpet in Venice. Here’s an indepth article about the collaboration.
One of the most interesting interviews I did for the book (out on October 28th!) was with Christopher Young, Vice President and Creative Director of Tiffany Patrimony who collaborated with Frankenstein’s brilliant costume designer Kate Hawley for the film. He gave Hawley full access to the Tiffany archive, 150+ years of jewelry. Hawley was enraptured. Not only did Tiffany donate some key pieces to the film, but Young coordinated the design team, who created period-appropriate and yet also fantastical pieces for the film, everything from necklaces to silver brooches of the Frankenstein family crest. Charles Lewis Tiffany founded Tiffany in 1837, and Mary Shelley died in 1851, so they were on the planet at the same time.
Mia Goth as Elizabeth in Frankenstein. (Ken Woroner/Netflix © 2025) She is wearing the Tiffany & Co. Archive Wade Necklace.
Christopher, Kate and I met at the Tiffany headquarters in NY. We looked through all the pieces, the archival pieces and the ones designed, and Christopher gave me a fascinating history lesson about Tiffany as well as the 19th century designers, many of whom were women. He also put together a book for me, to use as reference when writing about the collab for the book. So thoughtful. I’ve lived a long life and it’s kind of wild that it somehow it brought me to Tiffany HQ in the shadow of the Flatiron building.
I did the major interviews in person in Scotland – production designer, Guillermo, costume, cinematographer, makeup, etc. – and the rest I did via Zoom, except for the Tiffany interview. That was in person as well, and came later in the process when I realized Tiffany probably deserved its own section in the book due to the historic nature of the collab, and also the huge impact of the jewelry used in the film. Hawley was in New York to give a lecture so we coordinated our schedules. I arrived at the headquarters, and sat in the waiting room for a while. Soaking up the sights. Everything was white and blue.
I was brought to a conference room by an Emily-Blunt-in-Devil-Wears-Prada archetype.
I had “dressed up” for the meeting, despite my Peppermint-Patty-aesthetic (or should I say 1970s Times Square hustler aesthetic? Either way. My style hasn’t really evolved.). She was a fashionista, though! She looked impeccable! As she brought me through the halls I saw a pile of the iconic blue boxes and I forgot my internal monologue (“how is my mascara, does my hair look okay?”) and instead gasped, “The blue boxes!!” (In high school, my friends and I would go down to New York with the Drama Club to see Broadway shows, and we’d wander around sightseeing – without a chaperone!! – ah, Gen-X – and we’d always make a pit-stop at Tiffany & Co’s flagship store on 5th Avenue. Of course we didn’t buy anything, we just looked, and the employees were probably like, “Oh God, teenage girls, please go away.” Still: we loved the boxes.) It was wild to see the famous blue boxes, just lying around on a shelf.
I basically just spoke out loud my reaction, instead of holding it back. Emily Blunt was perhaps “over” the blue boxes. She works there! She sees them all the time! But she didn’t scorn me or roll her eyes. She picked up one of the boxes, and had fun showing me the box in close up. Turns out, the blue is not a flat blue. The blue is made up of 100s of teeny tiny little T’s. I had no idea!
Lesson: if you are intimidated by Emily Blunt or your surroundings, surrender to it. Don’t pretend you’re over it. Be like “Oh my God this is so cool!” and say it out loud. They might think you’re a rube but they might not!
I’m so glad Christopher is getting his flowers in all these articles coming out about the film. He was so generous with his time, answering my questions in person as well as my followup questions over email.
The Tiffany section in the book has a gorgeous layout and profiles each of the pieces in the film, either donated or designed. It’s so wonderful to get a chance to pay tribute to these “old-fashioned” innovative artisans. The jewelry you will see in the film is not costume jewelry donated from a costume shop. It’s the real deal.
This is so cool!
I love that you have given them their own section in the book. I will be sure to pay special attention to the jewellery when I watch the film.
Maddy
Maddy – thanks, yes, it is such a cool aspect of the film – it was a real learning experience for me, because I guess I assumed that, oh, you need jewelry, you hit up costume shops. There’s a lot of great costume jewelry makers out there, etc. So this whole thing was real revelation to me – and Christopher Young was just fascinating, an encyclopedia of aristic/artisanship history of the last 200 years. so it is really pleasing to be able to highlight someone like him!