Pomellato gives Yang Zi the Nudo seat, and China drama soft power
Pomellato named Chinese actress Yang Zi a global brand ambassador on July 29, launching a Chen Man–shot Nudo campaign a month after her Magnolia Best Actress win. The Kering jewelry house is buying drama soft power for everyday color gemstones.
Anika Rao
Pomellato did not need another airport idol for this seat. On July 29 the Milan jewelry house named Chinese actress Yang Zi a global brand ambassador and dropped her first campaign for Nudo, the clawless color-gemstone line that already drives a lot of its everyday-luxury sales. The pictures come from Chen Man, one of China’s most influential photographers, and they read as soft status you can stack: blue topaz cushions, rose gold, diamond circles, no claw settings fighting the crop.
CEO Sabina Belli called Yang a new voice for the Pomellato woman. Yang’s own line is cleaner: the maison celebrates women unafraid to be themselves, and she said she feels that. The object on the body is the story for Goldscene readers. Nudo launched in 2001 as “naked” stones in graphic, cushion-like cuts. Rings, earrings, and pendants stack in vivid colorways. That is jewelry designed to survive a phone crop and a white shirt, not only a gala neckline.
Why this face, and why now
Yang, born in 1992 in Beijing, marked roughly two decades since her on-screen start with this appointment. She is best known abroad for dramas including Ashes of Love, Go Go Squid!, and Lost You Forever. WWD puts her combined following across Instagram, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin above 93 million. In June she won Best Actress at the 31st Shanghai Television Festival Magnolia Awards for Born to Be Alive, becoming the first post-’90s actress to take that trophy. Pomellato is buying a Magnolia month, not a one-season spike.
The fashion stack around her already exists. Valentino took her as a brand ambassador in late 2023. Prada Beauty followed for makeup and fragrance. Michael Kors used her as an APAC face, including a Lunar New Year capsule Chen Man also shot. Pomellato takes the hard-luxury jewelry category. That split matches the double-ambassador logic we already mapped: clothes and beauty can share a face with jewelry when the categories do not compete on the same billboard sentence.
The China jewelry math
Pomellato is Kering-owned and has spent years chasing Greater China through boutiques, Gen Z color stones, and localized campaigns. Janine Chang was an early Greater China ambassador. Yao Chen held a China seat. Krystal Jung opened a Korea lane in 2023. Roy Wang, the C-pop star and former TFBoys member, took a global ambassador role in 2025 with an Iconica campaign also lensed by Chen Man. Yang’s Nudo chapter keeps the same photographer and moves the global seat onto a drama lead whose Magnolia win just refreshed her prestige math.
Our jewelry red-carpet ledger still holds: houses win when the piece survives zoom and repetition. Nudo is built for that. Read this next to Shin Min-a at Omega if you want July’s other drama-to-hard-luxury move, and to the double-ambassador map if you are sorting which categories can stack.
Our take
Pomellato is not chasing another chart spike. It is stacking a Magnolia-winning Chinese drama face on the collection that sells everyday color. Watch whether the blue Nudo stack becomes Yang’s repeat carpet and campaign cuff the way soft-status watches already work for Korean drama ambassadors. If Chen Man’s Nudo frames travel past the Chinese feed into diaspora jewelry talk, the house will have bought the right soft-power object.
