The Blue Necklace That Won the World Series
Credit to Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images
The Blue Necklace That Won the World Series: Miguel Rojas, Van Cleef & Arpels, and What Luxury Means on the Field
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Miguel Rojas wore a Van Cleef & Arpels necklace when he won the 2025 World Series.
It wasn't what you'd typically see on the field. No diamond pendants, no thick Cuban link chains in gold or silver. Just a delicate, dark blue, 10-motif Alhambra choker, sitting quietly against his uniform like it belonged there.
"This blue one was a gift from my wife for Father's Day," Rojas told E! News. "It goes really well with the uniform…I like this choker style because it's a little bit easier to wear. It's not bouncing up and down."
Rojas was hardly a household name going into Game 7. A 36 year-old utility man, he had started just twice in the previous month. He was playing through a painkilling injection for a rib muscle injury he'd sustained the night before. His wife, Mariana, had told him he'd have his moment. He stepped into the batter's box in the ninth inning, down 4-3, with two outs and the season on the line, and hit a game-tying home run that broadcaster Joe Davis could only greet with two words: "No way."
In doing so, he became the first player in MLB history to hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning or later of a World Series Game 7. The Dodgers won it two innings later. Mariana was right.
That necklace was around his neck for all of it.
When you're performing on the world stage, you're always speaking to multiple audiences at once. Your fans, your teammates, your family, the media. And if you're an immigrant athlete, you're also speaking to an extended community back home. Rojas signed out of Venezuela as a teenager to little fanfare. The Cincinnati Reds let him walk as a minor-league free agent. He spent thirteen years grinding out a career before one swing in October changed everything. That necklace spoke in several languages simultaneously.
To the casual viewer, it was a nice blue necklace. To fashion-literate audiences, it was a $6,700 status symbol. To Mariana, it was a Father's Day gift come full circle. To Latino communities plugged into the cultural moment happening in Latino music right now, it was a flex, but a refined one. There's a difference between announcing your arrival and simply being present, already seated at the table.
That distinction matters, because Van Cleef & Arpels is not just another luxury jewelry house. Since opening on Paris's Place Vendôme in 1906, the maison built a clientele that reads like a roster of the 20th century's most glamorous women: Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Empress Farah Diba of Iran, Maria Callas, and the Duchess of Windsor. It pioneered techniques that redefined fine jewelry, most famously the Mystery Setting, in which gemstones appear to float with no visible metal. The Alhambra collection, launched in 1968 and inspired by the four-leaf clover, is its most iconic line, and the one that has quietly become a cultural touchstone far beyond the circles that originally claimed it.
Flip through Latino music videos from the past two years and you'll see it: Peso Pluma draped in Alhambra, songs literally titled "Van Cleef." According to Billboard, the brand doesn't lend jewelry to artists. This adoption is entirely organic.
Van Cleef has always been one of those "if you know, you know" brands: exclusive not just because of price, but because of proximity. You probably had to grow up around it to know it existed. This isn't the oversized bling of early reggaeton or the flashy chains of 2000s hip-hop. This is controlled wealth. Confident wealth. The aesthetic language has shifted from look what I earned despite you to I'm here, and I belong here.
When Latino artists and athletes wear Van Cleef, they're not code-switching into someone else's idea of luxury. They're expanding what luxury can represent. They're not asking for a seat. They've already taken it.
Baseball has always been a sport of inherited symbols: the ritual, the superstition, the gear (including jewelry) passed down or gifted. But it's also a sport that absorbs and reflects the cultures of the players who make it extraordinary. There's something deeply American about that, in the most expansive sense of the word.
As Rojas himself put it after the Series: "We won moments more than we won games."
Miguel Rojas in his blue Alhambra is both timeless and of-this-moment: honoring his wife, playing his position, quietly asserting that elegance and excellence are not mutually exclusive.
So yes, he wore a $6,700 necklace to the World Series.
And yes, he won.
