Harwell Godfrey Reimagines 10-Carat Blue Diamond for Met Gala-Ready Brooch
Designer Lauren Harwell Godfrey made the piece as an homage to the 2025 gala’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”

If you’re Lauren Harwell Godfrey, the answer is, you absolutely crush it.
On Monday, as celebrities were making their way up the steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in a soggy New York City, Godfrey announced via Instagram that Frank Everett, vice chairman of Sotheby’s Jewelry, Americas, had asked her to create a piece of jewelry as a tribute to theme of the 2025 Met Gala, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
He told her she’d be working with a very special stone—a 10.02-carat fancy vivid blue diamond mined in South Africa and dubbed “The Mediterranean Blue.”
The diamond is estimated to sell for up to $20 million when it goes up for auction at Sotheby’s next week.
“I designed the brooch inspired by royal medals, reimagined through an African diasporic lens—sharp geometry, symbolic black onyx, and this once-in-a-lifetime gem at its center,” Godfrey said, adding that it is “an heirloom for Black royalty made with an African diamond.”
Black onyx is the same material the designer chose for another jewel that carried special meaning, her heart pendant created in the summer of 2020, in the thick of the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the nation, that benefitted the NAACP.
The Mediterranean Blue diamond is being offered as a highlight of Sotheby’s High Jewelry sale, which is scheduled to take place in Geneva May 13.
When news about the diamond’s sale was first announced, the stone was pictured loose and set in a simple four-prong ring as a solitaire.
A Sotheby’s spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the Mediterranean Blue will be presented as a ring in Geneva, not in the Harwell Godfrey-designed brooch.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the spring 2025 exhibition at The Met’s Costume Institute, officially opens May 10 and will be on view through Oct. 26.
The exhibition is an examination of Black style over 300 years through the concept of dandyism, exploring the importance of style to the formation of Black identities in the United States and Europe.
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