Jewelry makers have been showcasing the marine mollusk, and vintage sellers say they can’t keep them in stock.
The swirly shell that held the voice of the Little Mermaid in Disney’s 2023 live-action adaptation looked like the ancient marine mollusk called an ammonite.
That’s because Colleen Atwood, the costume designer who also created the movie’s shell necklace, said in an email that she had based it “on a real fossilized shell I had.”
But it was only one of the ammonites to appear in jewelry in recent years as the mollusk’s spiral structure and patterned surfaces have caught the eye of designers and jewelry resellers alike.
For example, ammonites appeared in Ashley Moubayed’s 2023 Apocalyptic Summer collection for her jewelry brand Don’t Let Disco, based in Brooklyn. And she has been using them for such recent designs as Akasha Alchemy, a 65-inch waist adornment with stones like smoky topaz, obsidian and jade ($575); a choker beaded with crystals and pyrite ($525); and as charms that are part of a silver necklace called the Keeper Collar ($695).
The designer likes to joke that her favorite color is “neon beige, and actually that is the color of some of these fossils,” she said. “But I think I’m most drawn to them for the profound sense of history.”
After all, the creatures — distant cousins of the octopus and the nautilus — lived in shallow seas worldwide until 66 million years ago, when they mostly died out with the dinosaurs.
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