Tooth Jewellery: Dolly Cohen Is The Woman Behind Rihanna And Beyoncé’s Sparkliest Smiles

By Amel Mukhtar

Dolly Cohen, legendary designer of grillz for the likes of Beyoncé and Pharrell, doesn’t rush me as, plagued with indecision, I pore over her selection of three-diamond hearts, three-diamond lines, and single square- and circle-set diamonds, all set in 18-karat gold, at Dover Street Market. “You have to see you everyday in the mirror,” she acknowledges, with a grin.

Tooth jewellery is a world I already love (I’ve owned four sets of gold grillz in the past – RIP – and used to apply rhinestone tooth gems with nail glue), so, for this huge step up to real tooth diamonds, I want the flashiest statement piece possible. I was thinking about getting the line. Wait, let’s try the heart. Hmm, actually maybe the line there, instead? Next tooth? Hang on, try the heart on that one? OK… let’s see that line again?

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Cohen patiently hovers the two styles over my teeth time and again. But without make-up, no matter the placement, I think my face looks off balance. Those diamond triads seem to demand a face as glam as they are, and I do not want my teeth to outshine me on lazy (read: most) days. Just as panic starts to bubble up, we give the square diamond a go. It pops! And I feel like I pop! Secured with UV on a canine on the same side as my nose stud, they form a twinkling constellation when I smile. Dolly herself prefers the “secret” placements – she has a small, subtle one on a back tooth that you can only see when she does her widest grin.

By Henrik Lischke

The applied diamond.

By Daniel Rodgers

By Lucrezia Malavolta

By Michel Mejía

Ahead of the launch of her own line of tooth jewellery, she has been wide-grinning a lot. Cheerful, charismatic and unpretentious, Dolly is dressed inconspicuously in navy, her own style nowhere near as flamboyant as her work. But then, as someone who shies away from the limelight, discretion is her calling card. Although she has worked with everyone from Lady Gaga to Rihanna to Jay-Z – and could no doubt recount any number of celebrity tales – she politely refuses to share any. The most I manage to glean is that, for her, the most special piece she ever created was for Queen B – a ruby and emerald high jewellery design. That the superstar was “parfaite” is as much as Dolly will say, beaming proudly. “A big opportunity.”

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The Parisian jewellery designer, who was born to Moroccan parents, has had many of those, but, at this point, has helped to create just as many. In the 18 years she has spent bejewelling teeth, Cohen has shaped this corner of the jewellery world. When she started out – as her right-hand-man and occasional translator, Michel, jumps in to help explain – grillz were only really worn by men, and seen as ultra masculine. “I really tried to change that,” she tells Vogue over cake at DSM’s Rose Bakery. She sought to create more feminine pieces (“something nobody at the time did”), and pioneered a grill signature: the line, a small strip of precious metal that sits between the teeth. A statement, but more subtle than traditional grillz, the design caught on worldwide. It nows gets an adaption for Cohen’s tooth diamond line.

By Rachel Garrahan

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Beyond creativity, what sets Dolly apart is her extraordinary attention to detail. When she was starting out, A$AP Rocky came to Paris and, aware of his love of grillz, she pushed to meet him. She succeeded, and delivered his Dolly Cohen piece on the day they met. “He realised that it was perfectly fit to his mouth.” Now, after years of making bespoke pieces following in-person consultations, Dolly’s exquisite range of tooth jewellery is available to shop online or at Dover Street Market – and can be easily applied by a dentist. “Now is the beginning of a new life,” says Cohen, who already has her sights trained on expanding beyond mouth jewellery. “Let’s go for everything!”