Damson Idris arrived on the Oscars red carpet wearing a diamond brooch that was not pulled from a vault or borrowed from a brand archive. He designed it himself. The British-Nigerian actor, dressed in a custom Prada navy suit and whose film F1: The Movie is nominated for four Academy Awards this year, designed a bespoke brooch under his own fine jewelry label, DIDRIS. He then worked with Theo Ioannou, founder of CAD-MAN, a bespoke jewelry studio inside London’s Goldsmiths’ Centre, to bring the piece to life.
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Damson Idris at the 2026 Oscars.
“The idea of connection is the biggest thing for DIDRIS,” Idris tells T&C. “It’s more than a brand—it’s a legacy, and it’s a legacy that started with my mother.” Idris’s mother, Silifat Idris, worked in the jewelry business in London while he was growing up, buying and selling gold.
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A closeup of Idris wearing the brooch on the red carpet.
The brooch’s centerpiece is a heat-treated, natural marquise blue diamond weighing 7.41 carats, flanked by two white marquise diamonds and two pairs of triangle diamonds. The surrounding 42 natural white diamonds carry a combined weight of 6.38 carats. The stones were sourced via De Beers from Botswana and South Africa, with each diamond certified through the Kimberley Process, an international certification scheme supported by the UN and designed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the supply chain. Idris notes the diamonds’ provenance was important to him because of his African background.
The number of diamonds were also chosen deliberately. The 42 white diamonds represent seven multiplied by six, with six reflecting the number of children in Idris’s family. Seven carries its own significance, as noted by Idris and Ioannou, as a number long associated across cultures with perfection, completion, and the divine, appearing in religious texts and mythology.
Didris
A sketch of the brooch depicts a compass-like design, searching for the North Star, complemented by the negative space within the DIDRIS logo.
“In our craft, nothing is concealed. Structure, setting and surface must be resolved with care, because what we make carries both material and human value,” says Ioannou. “Jewelry is never neutral. At its core it carries value, love and memory. It marks commitment, celebration and loss. Because of this, the act of making carries responsibility. What we produce will enter someone’s life and remain there.”
A heritage brand in the making
It’s almost expected for Hollywood actors to have side businesses these days, often in the forms of liquor, skincare, or fragrance brands. Luxury jewelry, including being involved at the drawing board, is a rarity among celebrities. Even though Idris does have jewelry industry ties through his mother, he acknowledges it was a “real trial” to get into the business.
“I’m a longstanding ambassador of Prada and the first [designer] shoes I ever bought were Prada, so it was a seamless connection,” Idris says. “But everything else often felt like a money grab, and I see that with a lot of my peers too. No shade, they get into alcohol and they get into this, they get into that. But where is the story? The story is everything.” In the jewelry space, Idris says he has long admired Cartier and Bulgari, citing their heritage stories and the seamless bridge those brands built between jewelry, filmmaking, and fashion.
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Dressed in a ruby red suit by Tommy Hilfiger, Idris can be seen wearing his first DIDRIS brooch at the 2025 Met Gala.
“The spark came while I was filming F1, and I said, ‘OK, now is the time to put my head down and do something that I’m gonna be really proud of, and DIDRIS is that,” Idris says. He debuted the first piece from DIDRIS at the 2025 Met Gala: a set of brooches resembling a pocket watch, featuring an 11-carat emerald surrounded by 18 channel-cut tourmalines and 238 tsavorites and diamonds.
The brand offers a selection of fine jewelry for sale through its online boutique only, including the 18-karat yellow gold Monogram Cuff for $15,900, a Tahitian pearl necklace with a garnet anchor for $23,500, and the Compass Earrings, made from 18-karat yellow gold with five diamonds in each earring for $4,950. The latter’s design is described to be inspired by Damson’s 2025 Met Gala brooch.
The road ahead
Idris has been visible on the awards circuit this season following last summer’s premiere of F1: The Movie. Idris has collected honors linked to the project and his broader profile, including the Horizon Award at the 2026 American Black Film Festival Honors, a 2026 Black Reel Award and a 2026 NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In the Joseph Kosinski-directed film, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a former driver pulled back into the sport to help a struggling team, while Idris plays rookie Joshua Pearce, his counterpart on the track. The production was filmed at live Grand Prix weekends with Formula 1’s participation. The part has manifested itself into a new role for Idris as he was recently named as a global brand ambassador for Formula 1, with the intent of drawing new fans to the sport.
Idris is next set to appear in the long-awaited cinematic adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling YA novel Children of Blood and Bone, slated for release in January 2027. He is also attached to play Miles Davis in Bill Pohlad’s Miles & Julietet, centered on Davis’ romance with French actress Juliette Gréco.
Dan Medhurst
The brooch also features an “F1” engraving hidden on the interior, commemorating F1 being nominated for Best Picture at the 2026 Academy Awards.
Given how many ventures he is pursuing at once, it might be hard to pick a favorite, but Idris doesn’t hesitate. “As you age in [the movie] industry, there is a kind of ‘all right, do it again, do it again, do it again’ nature to it that does sometimes get old,” he says. “With jewelry, however, this is going to last long after I’m gone, and I’m going to be able to pass this down to my kids someday.”
There’s also something to be said about working for yourself. “[Jewelry] is bringing me into spaces that I never thought I’d be in,” Idris says. “I go to sleep and I wake up and I think of a new idea. Unlike acting, where I have to wait for a million pieces to come together, I decided to make a brooch for the Oscars a month ago and here it is.”
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.
