Sartorial Onscreen

If you haven’t heard, Zendaya wore a pair of earrings created using nearly 3,000-year-old golden discs while promoting The Odyssey. Some have praised the choice as part of Zendaya’s famously impeccable method dressing, but others have criticized her for disrespecting ancient artifacts for a press tour look.

While it may seem like just another piece of celebrity gossip, Zendaya and stylist Law Roach have stepped into the middle of a complicated conversation about colonialism and artifact repatriation.

To be clear, this post isn’t about Zendaya as an individual. It’s about the larger antiquities market and the harm it causes around the world. I’m not here to attack Zendaya’s personal character, but rather to criticize her actions in this particular situation.

Let’s start with some context. The discs used to create Zendaya’s earrings date back to 700 B.C.E. and are believed to have been discovered in Iran in the 1940s. They’ve been specifically attributed to the Ziwiye hoard, which was looted and saw many of its artifacts sold in antique markets and dispersed throughout the world.

Roach acquired the earrings from Barron London, a British dealer known for displaying a wide array of historical pieces. They were created by jeweler Glenn Spiro for his collection “Materials of the Old World,” which included a variety of artifacts from the Middle East and Africa.

The particular pair of earrings that Zendaya wore appears to have been created by drilling holes in the two golden discs and mounting them with diamonds. And herein lies the issue.

These earrings, whose provenance is already questionable at best, were created by destroying irreplaceable artifacts. I can’t make a confident claim that the discs were stolen (although I suspect they were), but no one can deny that permanent alterations were made for the purpose of converting them into a wearable item that could be bought and sold.

As cries for repatriation of artifacts to their homelands grow louder, the mistreatment of these artifacts is especially egregious. It’s a shame, really, because it didn’t have to be this way.

Zendaya and Roach have the fashion world at their fingertips. They could have collaborated with historians and designers to create replicas of the artifacts. This would have preserved the aesthetic they were going for and allowed them to bring attention to these culturally significant items without risking damage. Instead, they chose to source irreparably damaged artifacts from a white jeweler who acquired them by questionable means from a country which is currently being bombed by the United States.

This is essentially the difference between cultural appreciation and appropriation. The sharing and borrowing of culture can be a beautiful thing, but only when it’s done with respect and consideration for those to whom it belongs. Celebrating Iranian cultural heritage is a noble idea, but surely it could be better done by consulting actual Iranian artists, historians or archaeologists. It’s not up to British dealers and American celebrities to decide how to present Iranian culture.

What Glenn Spiro, Barron London, Law Roach and Zendaya have done is not cultural appreciation. It’s an act of extreme elitism, treating cultural heritage as a trophy to parade around without any regard for or recognition of the culture from which it came.

But again, this isn’t about Zendaya. While her use of artifacts in a very public manner has drawn a lot of attention, she’s far from the first person to use artifacts that didn’t belong to her for her own personal enjoyment. Countless artifacts around the world have been looted, stolen or otherwise removed from their homes to be sold or displayed elsewhere, often under the shadow of colonialism. Many are on display in museums, while others still are locked away in personal collections.

Using artifacts in this way ultimately drives the demand that allows the antiquities black market to thrive, perpetuating the harm it does to already oppressed cultural groups and local communities.

I don’t have any problem with Zendaya. I’ve always admired her hard work commitment to treating fashion as a serious art form. But her and her team’s decision to use another culture’s artifacts in such a disrespectful way is disappointing, and I hope to see her do better in the future.