Zendaya Criticized for Wearing Stolen Iranian Earrings

Zendaya DRAGGED By Historians For Wearing ‘Stolen’ 3,000-Year-Old Iranian Gold Earrings To London Photocall—And The Internet Is Clutching Their Pearls!

Honey, grab your historical textbooks and lock up the museum vaults, because the absolute queen of the red carpet just stepped right into a multi-thousand-year international geopolitical firestorm! BlkCosmo has been tracking a complete, hyper-ventilating digital wildfire after global fashion icon Zendaya pulled up to the London photocall for her highly anticipated epic film The Odyssey looking like an absolute goddess—but baby, the ancient accessories hanging from her ears have historians and activist groups absolutely screaming! If you want to dive deeper into cultural appropriation in fashion, we’ve got the receipts.

For the high-profile rooftop event, Zendaya and her legendary image architect Law Roach did what they do best: they constructed a total theme. She wore a breathtaking, custom ivory Jacquemus halter dress with a matching headscarf. But the absolute main event of the look was a pair of massive, shimmering gold disc earrings surrounded by a halo of diamonds. Those cultural appropriation moments just keep coming in high fashion, don’t they?

“just so you guys remember, she’s an American wearing stolen earrings from a country that her country is bombing rn”

While fashion blogs were busy praise-worshipping the look, a group of hawk-eyed historians and social media commentators dropped some heavy, devastating receipts: those earrings are actually 3,000-year-old ancient Iranian artifacts that critics claim were sourced through “undisclosed means” and essentially looted from the Global South!

The Receipts: 3,000-Year-Old Persian Gold Mounted In Diamonds

Let’s talk about exactly what Zendaya had hanging from her lobes, honey. According to official jewelry credits, the earrings are a pair of Ziwiye gold medallion plaques dating all the way back to the first millennium BC in ancient Iran. These pieces aren’t your everyday gold hoop earrings—they’re literally millennia of history wrapped around diamonds.

They were originally acquired by Mayfair-based antique dealer Barron London, before being mounted onto 18-karat yellow gold and surrounded by a thin layer of natural diamonds by designer Glenn Spiro. In ancient times, these weren’t even earrings—they were royal decorative plaques meant to be stitched onto the luxury garments of Persian nobility. Imagine taking something with such ancestral roots and treating it like a fashion accessory for a single night on the red carpet.

The Backlash: Geopolitical Tensions and “Orientalist” Domination

The second the details of the ancient jewelry hit the algorithmic timelines, the internet completely violently exploded into a massive debate about colonialism, looting, and class privilege.

Let’s look at the cultural receipts directly like a supportive, grounded peer, not a rigid lecturer: Honey, we all love a high-fashion moment. But baby, when you are an American superstar wearing priceless, historically looted artifacts from a Middle Eastern nation that has been deeply impacted by Western sanctions, military interventions, and political strife, the aesthetics are going to hit a very sensitive, painful nerve! This isn’t just about serving looks—it’s about freedom struggle and who gets to control the narrative around our shared human history.

Many critics pointed out the extreme double standard of the West treating Middle Eastern history like a cool, disposable aesthetic trend while the modern people of those countries continue to face heavy political struggles.

Prominent Islamic history and art experts quickly took to the press to call out the stunt as “distasteful” and a textbook example of “Orientalist practices.” Historian Zirrar Ali told reporters: “Adorning artefacts, whether from museums or private collections, is often seen as harmless, but can in fact constitute a display of power and domination: one culture asserting ownership over the heritage of another.”

Is This Kim Kardashian’s Marilyn Monroe Dress Part 2?!

The internet immediately began drawing parallel comparisons to Kim Kardashian’s infamous 2022 Met Gala moment, where she squeezed into Marilyn Monroe’s historic, delicate “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress and allegedly caused permanent structural damage to the fabric.

Commentators are arguing that the new trend of celebrities raiding antique collections for red-carpet clout is incredibly dangerous. The famous Ziwiye hoard—the archaeological site where Zendaya’s gold pieces reportedly originated—has a highly controversial history, with experts noting the items were never excavated under professional scientific conditions and instead passed through the hands of shady, commercial black-market art dealers. It’s the kind of narrative we need to tell in our curated reading list about why cultural artifacts matter.

By wearing these pieces as casual red-carpet props, critics argue that Zendaya and her team are directly legitimizing the illegal antiquities trade.

The Digital Streets Are Completely Divided: “Leave Zendaya Alone, Honey!”

While the critique is heavy, Zendaya’s massive fanbase is fighting back in the comment sections, arguing that the actress didn’t personally dig up a tomb and was simply loaned the jewelry from a legal Mayfair gallery’s private archive.

“Hold on a minute! Y’all are really trying to drag Zendaya for wearing jewelry that a licensed London gallery legally loaned her?! She didn’t loot Iran, she’s just serving a thematic look for a movie about Greek mythology! Leave her alone, honey!” one viral user yelled on X, instantly securing tens of thousands of defensive engagements. But another user clapped back, “It doesn’t matter if it was a loan. Sourcing artifacts through ‘undisclosed means’ and putting diamonds on them is imperialist behavior. The past isn’t your playground!”

Neither Zendaya nor her stylist Law Roach have dropped an official statement addressing the mounting archaeological drama. We are keeping our notifications permanently locked to the fashion wires to see if they address the history, so stay completely locked into BlkCosmo, honey! Do you think Zendaya’s team crossed the line, or was this just an iconic fashion moment? Let’s talk about it below!