Australian actor Margot Robbie sparked global conversation with a single piece of jewelry: an Indian imperial necklace with a 400‑year backstory that she wore at the recent world premiere of Wuthering Heights in Los Angeles, reported Vogue.
The stone is widely associated with the Mughal court and is believed to date back to the early 17th century, during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahangir. According to The Hollywood Reporter India, Historians first link it to his wife, Empress Nur Jahan, who is said to have received the jewel from the emperor, and later to their son, Shah Jahan, who, in turn, gifted it to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. After Mumtaz’s death, Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, giving the diamond its modern name and cementing its association with India’s most famous monument to love.
For the premiere, Robbie walked the carpet in a custom Schiaparelli couture gown. But the centerpiece of her look sat at her collarbones: the Taj Mahal diamond necklace from the archive and estate of Elizabeth Taylor. The jewel is a heart‑shaped, table‑cut diamond later remounted by Cartier on a gold chain embellished with rubies and diamonds, imitating the silk cord on which it was originally worn in India centuries ago.
The diamond pendant is carved with an inscription in Persian, often described in coverage as Parsee, that translates to “Love is Everlasting,” along with Nur Jahan’s name. GulfNews said that the phrase has become part of the necklace’s mythology, fusing Mughal courtly romance with the cinematic love stories it now accompanies.
When Cartier acquired the stone in the 20th century, the house set it in jade and suspended it from a specially designed gold, ruby, and diamond chain that drew inspiration from the aesthetics of historic Indian jewelry while customizing it to Western high jewelry conventions. The result is a hybrid object: unmistakably Indian in origin and design language, yet reframed through a European luxury lens and later immortalized in Hollywood lore.
The Taj Mahal necklace’s modern history is inextricably linked to Elizabeth Taylor. In 1972, her then‑husband Richard Burton purchased the piece from Cartier and presented it to Taylor for her 40th birthday, calling it one of the most romantic gifts he had ever given. Taylor wore the necklace frequently, and it became one of the most emotionally charged jewels in her legendary collection, a shorthand for the intensity of the Burton‑Taylor relationship.
Following Taylor’s death, according to Only Natural Diamonds, the necklace appeared at a 2011 Christie’s auction of her jewels, where it drew headlines for its price and Indian provenance. After questions about the diamond’s exact dating and genuineness, the sale was later unwound, and the piece ultimately remained with the Elizabeth Taylor estate, where it has stayed—until Robbie’s red‑carpet outing.
For Wuthering Heights, stylist Andrew Mukamal contacted the estate months in advance to secure the loan. A trustee of the Elizabeth Taylor estate described the jewel as the piece in Taylor’s collection most closely tied to “epic, undeniable, and tempestuous love that surpasses time and even death,” making it a deliberate fit for a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s notoriously stormy romance.
On the carpet, Robbie said the necklace carries “a lot of romantic history” and felt particularly appropriate for a film built around obsessive love. The heart‑shaped Indian diamond, with its inscription about everlasting love, creates a visual and thematic bridge between Mughal court romance, Taylor and Burton’s mid‑20th‑century Hollywood drama, and the doomed relationship of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.
The styling underscored that narrative ambition. Robbie’s strapless Schiaparelli gown, customized from the label’s spring couture collection, traded the runway’s surreal blue‑and‑black palette for a more Victorian, gothic silhouette with lace and a petal skirt, which changed from onyx to scarlet. Against that dark‑to‑crimson gradient, the Taj Mahal diamond sat like an illuminated relic, turning the actor’s neckline into a stage for a story about desire, empire, and memory.
Robbie’s choice has also created debate surrounding how Indian cultural and historical artifacts circulate in Western fashion and media. Commentators in South Asian and student media have argued that the necklace, which Robbie publicly framed as “Elizabeth Taylor’s necklace,” originally belonged to an Indian empress and should be acknowledged as a product of the subcontinent’s artistic heritage, not just Hollywood glamour.
Social media reactions, particularly from Indian and diaspora voices such as within The Daily Orange, have criticized the red‑carpet moment as representative of a larger pattern: jewels and items that left the subcontinent in the colonial and post‑colonial eras resurfacing in European and American collections, often with India itself relegated to a footnote. For these critics, the Taj Mahal necklace is not simply a romantic prop, but an indication of how South Asian history is worn, displayed, and narrated by Western institutions without proportional credit or framing.
Yet even during the criticism, Robbie’s appearance has revived interest in the Mughal origins of the piece and in the women, Nur Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, whose names are embedded in its story. On one winter night in Los Angeles, a centuries‑old Indian diamond moved through yet another chapter of its journey, balancing on the line between spectacle and history as flashbulbs went off and a new retelling of Wuthering Heights began.