Florence Pugh Dazzles in Bulgari High-Jewelry Gold Necklace at Eclettica Event

The instinct to pair new high jewelry with old couture is a deliberate one, and nobody executed it more cleanly at Bulgari's Eclettica launch in Milan than Florence Pugh. At the late-March event held across the 17th-century Villa Arconati, described by many as the "little Versailles of Milan," and the refined Villa Necchi Campiglio, the 30-year-old British actress wore a green strapless taffeta gown from Elie Saab's Spring 2006 Haute Couture collection, pairing it with a statement pendant from the newly unveiled Eclettica high-jewelry line. The gown is two decades old. The necklace is brand new. That tension is exactly the point.

The Bulgari piece centers on a large cushion-cut sapphire, from which three teardrop-shaped diamonds are suspended in a cascading pendant drop. The design reads as simultaneously architectural and fluid: the geometric weight of the cushion cut anchored at the collarbone, the soft tear-drop diamonds falling like a controlled spill of light below it. Against the solid monochrome green of the taffeta, the sapphire-and-diamond composition gained full visual authority, adding depth and chromatic contrast that neither element could have produced alone. Stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray made the decisive call to keep the neckline bare above the pendant, allowing the piece to occupy exactly the space it was designed for.

This is the foundational styling rule the look illustrates: a strapless or off-shoulder neckline is not the absence of something, it is a cleared canvas. A pendant necklace, placed at the collarbone with nothing competing above or beside it, stops being an accessory and becomes the focal point of the entire silhouette. Earrings here play support; the necklace leads.

Recreating the principle at a more accessible price point is a matter of proportion and placement, not budget. A single fine yellow gold chain carrying a bezel-set colored stone pendant, kept short enough to rest just below the clavicle, replicates the essential geometry of Pugh's look. The colored stone does the work a sapphire does here: it introduces contrast and gives the eye a specific place to land. A teardrop diamond drop pendant in yellow gold, worn on a delicate cable chain against a bare décolletage, echoes the cascading movement of the three diamond drops without the high-jewelry price tag. For those who prefer a bolder approach, a small gold cluster pendant combining a center stone with flanking diamonds on a slightly longer chain achieves the same pendant-forward silhouette while diffusing the light across a wider surface.

The Eclettica collection that provided Pugh's necklace was unveiled across both Milanese venues on March 23, comprising over 160 high jewelry and high-end watch creations, including 15 transformable pieces, the highest number Bulgari has ever presented in a single collection, and more than 50 pieces valued at over one million dollars. Jewelry creative director Lucia Silvestri described the collection as guided by sculpture, painting, and architecture, with gemstones functioning as "precious strokes of color."

The archival Elie Saab gown earned its place not for nostalgia but for function: 20-year-old taffeta, structured and unyielding, held its shape well enough to keep the entire look sharp, giving the Bulgari pendant a stable, uncluttered backdrop. At a jewelry event where the jewelry is the product, that is the most useful thing a dress can do.