See How This Fashion Designer Reimagined the Jewels Stolen From the Louvre for Paris Haute Couture Week

Daniel Roseberry created two pieces inspired by the tiara and brooch that once belonged to French Empress Eugénie. Both artifacts were stolen from the Paris museum in October

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

January 29, 2026

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Copies of the crown jewels that were stolen from the Louvre in the infamous October heist have returned to Paris—albeit with an artistic twist.

They didn’t appear under protected museum glass. Instead, they were stylish replicas worn by actor Teyana Taylor for the first day of Paris Haute Couture Week.

The recreated jewels are the handiwork of Daniel Roseberry, a fashion designer and the artistic director of the French luxury fashion house Schiaparelli, whose spring collection kicked off one of the most influential haute couture events on the fashion calendar.

“I was going home for a walk from the office. It was right after the jewels had been stolen from the Louvre,” Roseberry tells Vanity Fair’s José Criales-Unzueta. “And I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to reimagine the Louvre jewels that were stolen?’”

Perhaps the boldest nod to the lifted artifacts was Roseberry’s interpretation of the pearl and diamond tiara made for French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. The original diadem, created by jeweler Alexandre-Gabriel Lemonnier in 1853, features nearly 2,000 diamonds and 212 pearls. Roseberry’s re-creation, though appearing slightly taller and more extravagant, bears a striking resemblance.

The tiara was paired with a replica of the empress’ diamond bow brooch. The Louvre acquired the historic piece, which features 2,438 diamonds and 196 rose-cut diamonds, in 2008 for a reported price of roughly $10 million. Since the October heist, the whereabouts of both items have remained unknown.

Taylor, fresh off her Golden Globes victory for Best Supporting Actress in the film One Battle After Another, debuted both pieces. “We made [the jewels] more three-dimensional,” Roseberry tells Vanity Fair.

The theme of the Schiaparelli collection was “The Agony and the Ecstasy”—fitting, perhaps, for an arts scene still reeling from a heist that French President Emmanuel Macron described as an attack on the country’s heritage.

Roseberry frequently taps into other artworks for inspiration. In addition to the Louvre jewels, the artist describes a recent visit to the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City as another creative spark behind the new collection.

Beneath the chapel’s ceiling, its walls were “densely painted by an army of artists in the years before Michelangelo began his work in 1508,” Roseberry says in a statement. “But crane your neck skyward, and thought stops. Feeling begins. That’s because 40 years later, one man came in and singlehandedly changed art forever, presenting a wild, visually rambunctious, vulnerable and romantic imagining of God, religion, faith and the human condition. Here is agony and ecstasy comingled, terrible and exquisite.”

In a spring 2023 collection, some of Roseberry’s most striking looks—including an all-red ensemble worn by Doja Cat and a massive lion’s head dress debuted by Kylie Jenner—were inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.

“What I am trying to do is to create the fashion equivalent of pop music,” Roseberry told the Washington Post’s Rachel Tashjian in 2023. “My mantra recently has been, ‘What is the hook? If this look was a song, how do I get it to be as visually captivating or catchy or universally appealing as a Taylor Swift song?’”

The Louvre has been under constant scrutiny since the theft that rocked the art world three months ago. The museum closed for three days in the aftermath of the heist, and it has also closed on several occasions during staff strikes over working conditions since then.

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.