Amal Clooney Opens Venice 2026 in Emerald Cartier — and the Red Carpet's Color Story Is Clear

A green-and-white flash on the Lido

The 83rd Venice Film Festival opened on the Lido this week, and before a single award was handed out, the red carpet had already produced the fall season's first true jewelry headline. On opening night — as her husband George Clooney received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement — Amal Clooney arrived at the premiere of Danny Boyle's Ink in a sleek black Haider Ackermann column gown, lit up by a suite of diamond-and-emerald Cartier high jewellery: drop earrings, a cocktail ring and a classic diamond bracelet.

It was a quietly powerful choice. No maximalist bib necklace, no headline-grabbing carat count announced from the podium — just deep green stones against black silk and platinum-white diamonds, the kind of restraint that reads as pure Old Hollywood. And it set the visual grammar for everything that followed on the Venice carpet: cool white diamonds, warm gold, and a decisive return of colored stones.

Amal Clooney at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2026. (GETTY IMAGES)

Clooney's relationship with Cartier runs deep; she has spoken at the maison's events and worn the house on red carpets for years. This time the message was less about a single spotlight stone and more about a mood — emeralds as the anchor color of a very grown-up, very confident look.

The looks that defined Venice's opening days

Amal set the tone, but she was far from alone. The opening screenings brought a run of serious jewelry, heavy on white diamonds by day and colored stones by night. A quick read of the standout looks tells you exactly where high jewellery's head is at going into fall.

Two threads jump out. First, the sheer diamond firepower — Hayes Warner alone wore more than 37 carats of Chopard diamonds across a single pair of earrings. Second, the color: from Amal's Cartier emeralds to Jane Fonda's green Pomellato necklace to the sapphires and aquamarines tucked into Leslie Bibb's Faune et Flore tiger ring — part of Cartier's brand-new animal high jewellery chapter that we covered in our report on the maison's "Into the Wild" collection.

Kendall Jenner attends the “Wild Horse Nine” Screening during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 03, 2026.(Getty Images)
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Briony Raymond Shadow Diamond Drop Earrings, 8 Carats, 18K Yellow Gold (Courtesy of Briony Raymond)

Emeralds are having a red-carpet moment — again

Here's the part that matters for anyone shopping, not just watching. Emeralds took over the Cannes carpet earlier this year, and Venice just confirmed it wasn't a fluke. When the most photographed woman on an A-list opening night chooses green over a clean diamond parure, stylists and buyers notice — and demand follows the pictures.

The appeal is easy to understand. Emerald is one of the "big three" colored stones alongside ruby and sapphire, and a fine, richly saturated emerald can command prices per carat that rival — and at the very top, exceed — a comparable colorless diamond. It photographs unlike anything else: that velvety green reads instantly on camera and against both black and pastel gowns. And it carries centuries of pedigree, from Mughal emperors to Old Hollywood, which is exactly the association Amal's stylist was reaching for.

For fall and the holiday season, the takeaway is a shift away from "bigger colorless stone" thinking and toward color, character and story. That's true at the couture level and equally true for an engagement ring or a milestone gift, where an emerald center or emerald accents feel current without being trendy in a way that will date.

If Venice has you eyeing green, it's worth understanding what actually separates a fine emerald from an ordinary one — origin, saturation, clarity and treatment all move the needle. Our complete emerald guide walks through how to evaluate a stone, and you can see the pieces we currently have in our emerald jewelry collection.

Red-carpet inspiration, Lake Tahoe craftsmanship

You don't need a festival invitation to wear the season's best idea. Whether it's a pair of emerald-and-diamond drops in the spirit of Amal's Cartier suite, a colored-stone cocktail ring, or a diamond piece designed around a single meaningful stone, the Forever Rox team can help you find it — or build it from scratch through our custom jewelry design studio in Incline Village.

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