Love it or hate it, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has us thinking thoughts that have never been thought before. Stuff like: Should I get muttonchops? and I didn’t know snails got freaky like that and Are eggs sexy? Another common one: How does Jacob Elordi look so good with a gold tooth?
Then, while promoting the film in Australia last week, Elordi proved it wasn’t a fluke. On the red carpet, he wore a custom grill by jewelry designer Jonathan Raksha, a.k.a. Maison Raksha.
Zoom in and you’ll see the yellow gold piece is engraved with a “C” and an “H,” to represent his and Margot Robbie’s characters, Cathy and Heathcliff. “Jacob had asked for ‘C’ and ‘H’ in cursive, so I had suggested that we intertwine the letters in a way that gave the piece a feeling of old antique style [jewelry],” says Raksha over the phone. The idea for the two star-set diamonds came from the jeweler. “A few days before completion I suggested to him, ‘Hey, I have an idea to put these two diamonds in to represent each character, and if we set them in a star-setting style, it just gives the piece a bit more flavor, a bit more excitement.’”
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This is the second grill Raksha has custom-made for Elordi, whom he also supplies with vintage watches (an Audemars Piguet Bamboo Day-Date Moonphase in 18k gold, if you were wondering). It’s also the second sentimental piece they’ve made together. He made the actor a gold window-style piece, set with an emerald.
While the business of intricately-themed press tour outfits is booming (his co-star Robbie has been orchestrating a doozy), Raksha says this was less red-carpet pageantry and more emotional.
“He’s a fashionable guy. He’s creative. I think he wanted a memento,” says Raksha. “This is Jacob’s memento to Wuthering Heights. We're here to actualize these fun ideas. That’s what we do as a brand. We create these timeless objects that have deeper meaning intertwined into them."
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Raksha adds, “Jacob found us because he was in Toronto and we have a grills company called Toronto Grillz.” Even though he doesn’t fully operate that business anymore, it “still exists as a website and as an Instagram page” and “because of how simply named it is, it still works as a honeypot when people are in town.”
So, Elordi found his way to Toronto Grillz, then to Raksha. “It's the same way that Post Malone found us years ago,” says Raksha with a laugh. “This was before he popped off, we got an email from post-malone-at-hotmail-dot-com.
“So what starts out with an artist being in Toronto—for whatever reason—they think, ‘Oh, I should get a grill while I'm here.’ And then they discover that there's a very multifaceted jewelry brand based out of Toronto and that we're also experts in watch-sourcing. We've been known for making grills and making statements in grills since 2014, from A$AP Rocky to Young Thug, Gunna, Kendrick [Lamar]. We've done grills for everyone for almost a decade.”
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As for next projects, he’s not fussed where he goes next. “I would say that we stand by at the ready to help Jacob execute his ideas,” says Raksha. “We're at his service, really.”
This story has been updated. A version of this story originally appeared on British GQ.