Diamonds in the Buff

That's a pricy, yet pretty, Scenery Censor.

"That woman wasn't nude! She had a diamond in her navel!"

— How to Murder Your Wife

A woman wears prominent jewelry in such a way as to draw attention to what she's not wearing. Normally done with a necklace, probably because of just where that pendant is hanging, but can be any jewelry that draws attention to itself, such as dangly earings, bracelets and bangles, or a waist chain—do they exist for any other reason? The appeal of this is that since the woman's body is adorned but not actually concealed she's showing herself off.

A Sister Trope to Naked in Mink, Sexy Coat Flashing. Some kinds of Barely-There Swimwear are made with this in mind as well.

As shown in the page image, this trope works well for a Reclining Reigner.

---

Examples

Comic Books

• Cavewoman: As first seen in Oasis, and later explored in much greater depth in Carrie's Oasis Diary, the King of Oasis kidnaps women for his harem and dresses them in Stripperific outfits; sometimes consisting of just gold chains hanging from their nipples and belly buttons.
• A number of women such as Akivasha, Thalis, Bêlit and many others had been depicted this manner in Conan comic adaptations and original stories.
• Purgatori's original costume after being turned into a vampire was nothing but gold ornaments and pasties◊. Her modern costumes are relatively more modest.
• Rulah, Jungle Goddess: In "The Pearls of Patmos" (Zoot Comics #14a), Circo, the Queen of Patmos, wears a jeweled bikini that does technically have some fabric underneath it. However, the shrine maidens who guard the pearl temple wear only bikinis and wristbands made entirely out of pearls.
• Dynamite Comics' Warlord of Mars adapts this look from John Carter of Mars very faithfully for both males and females.

Fan Works

• In Rocketship Voyager, B'Elanna Torres shows Chakotay a pin-up from National Geographic of an Amazon of Venus "bedecked in jewels, a sword harness, and not much else." She then goes on a rant about how diamonds are a scam by Terran traders who are buying up land on Venus with cheap synthetic diamonds, while Chakotay quietly thinks that the Amazons he fought were covered in blood rather than diamonds.
• In The Power of Seven, during Fleur's initial sexual encounters with Harry, she uses her Veela command of fire to incinerate her clothing rather than just removing her clothes, engulfing herself in flame so that she emerges with only emerald earrings, a silver necklace and a simple chain bracelet.

Film

• 300: Some of the girls in Xerxes' Royal Harem had little but gold chains and pasties covering their lady bits.
• Then there's the scene in which Diabolik puts large emeralds on nude Eva's body in Danger: Diabolik.
• Lisle's enormous torso-covering necklace in Death Becomes Her. Just about manages to cover her up, while always looking like it's about to fall open any second.
• The title/credits sequence to Diamonds Are Forever.
  • And of course, Plenty O'Toole, initially with clothes, and later without clothes (and then she loses the diamonds after losing her clothes).
• At the end of Die Another Day, Jinx is covered in nothing but diamonds as she and Bond consummate their relationship in a South Korean Buddhist temple located in a valley.
• In Femme Fatale, the jewel is the MacGuffin.
• A Fine Mess. Claudia is seen wearing earrings while taking a bubble bath and talking with Spence on the phone, and arrives at Spence's apartment wearing earrings, a necklace and even rings on her fingers. The earrings and necklace are visible when she is on top of him in bed.
• Junebug in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka died from this.
• There is an allusion to this in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:
  Indiana Jones: Wear your jewels to bed, princess?
  Willie Scott: Yeah... and nothing else.
• In the 1944 adaptation of Kismet, Jamilla (played by Marlene Dietrich) dances in one iconic scene with an elaborate jewelry and gold chest ornament.
• In Liane, Jungle Goddess, Liane forgoes the usual Fur Bikini of the Jungle Princess, and instead just wears a Loincloth and necklaces.
• During Sherlock's seduction in Sherlock: Case of Evil, Anna strips off her Gorgeous Period Dress so she is wearing nothing but a pearl choker.
• In Titanic (1997), Rose poses for her portrait nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace.
  Rose: Jack, I want you to draw me like your French girls. Wearing this.
  Jack: All right.
  Rose: Wearing only this.
• In To Catch a Thief, when Francie wants to seduce John, who is a jewel thief, she wears a necklace to draw his attention to her cleavage (she normally doesn't wear jewelry). She does wear clothes, though, since the film was made in 1955.
• In Troy, Paris puts a necklace on Helen while she is otherwise nude.

Literature

• In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden gives Dagny a ruby necklace that she doesn't think will look good on her... until he explains that she's supposed to wear it without any other clothing.
• In the Show Within a Show play in Book of the New Sun, Severian, Dorcas and Jolenta play what appears to be their culture's versions of Adam, Eve and Lilith. (OK, Lilith was never mentioned in the Bible, but you get the idea.) All three are naked, but Jolenta (who plays the Lilith equivalent) is wearing jewels.
• Books of the Raksura: Raksura Queens usually wear plenty of jewelry and absolutely nothing else. Justified since Raksura are Voluntary Shapeshifters with no nudity taboo, since their clothes vanish when they shift from human to draconic form.
• Dudley Pope's Buccaneer has a conversation between main character Ned Yorke, recently turned pirate, and his sweetheart in which she teases him that successful pirates can afford to dress their women "in ropes of pearls and gold bracelets!" His response:
  "As soon as I can afford it, I will dress you in ropes of pearls and gold bracelets. And nothing else!"
  She blushed and looked away. "So you have an added incentive to be successful!"
• In Robert E. Howard's "The Slithering Shadow", Conan the Barbarian, fleeing soldiers, runs in on a woman dressed like this. She uses a Trap Door on him.
  • In The Hour of the Dragon Conan encounters a harem girl named Zenobia. She is described as wearing nothing but a wisp of silk twisted about her loins and "jeweled breast-plates."
  • Same goes for pirate leader Belit, the self-styled Queen of the Black Coast in the eponymous story, clad in a silken girdle, sandals and unspecified "ornaments".
• Done with flowers in the first book of The Darksword Trilogy.
• Discworld: The fantasy-barbarian-queen parody in The Colour of Magic is adorned like this, managing to impress both Hrun the Barbarian's libido and mercenary sensibilities at the same time.
• In the Frederick Forsyth novel The Dogs of War, a woman seduces Cat Shannon, the lead character, while wearing nothing but a gold waist chain.
• In The Dresden Files, Maeve wears this kind of an outfit to a party and attempts to seduce Harry. Not only does it fail, he gives her the hilarious nickname, "Little Miss Spanglecrotch", to add insult to injury.
  Maeve: There's no secret what you were up to, wearing that dress.
  Sarissa: Me?! You were wearing rhinestones! And nothing else!
  Maeve: They. Were. Diamonds!
• A male example in Emerald Prince—the palace musician Florin regularly dresses like this. Standard attire in Thyreia, regardless of gender, is also probably closer to this than it is to what you might consider fully dressed.
• Flashman and the Mountain of Light. Old Flashy gets a shock when Queen Victoria produces the Koh-i-Noor diamond and asks how it was worn in its native setting. He decides to keep the truth to himself.
  “Native setting” was right: I could see it now as I saw it first, blazing in its bed of tawny naked flesh—in the delectable navel of that gorgeous trollop Maharani Jeendan, its dazzling rays shaming the thousands of lesser gems that sleeved her from thigh to ankle and from wrist to shoulder...
• An occasional threat against a slave girl on Gor is that she will be sent out in public naked but adorned with jewelry, to prove that her master can afford to clothe her but has consciously decided against it.
• This is standard attire (male and female) in the John Carter of Mars novels.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast refers frequently to John Carter of Mars, and at one point the female main characters invoke this trope.
• A variant in Kushiel's Legacy. Melisande contracts Phèdre (a courtesan) to accompany her as a "pet" to a court function wearing a very see-through gauze gown studded with diamonds, and a collar with a magnificent diamond (and ring for a leash). Phèdre-an experienced courtesan at this point—is still both amazed at the opulence of the outfit, and more than a little mortified at being that exposed in front of every high-ranking noble of the realm.
• In Stephen King's Pet Sematary, when Louis buys his wife, Rachel, a sapphire necklace, she says that she will "take everything off except this."
• The Reluctant King: It's mentioned that a wizardess in a costume competition put a jewel in her navel to qualify as her "costume" (as she's wearing something) with nothing else on, nearly winning it.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, some Tuerasian women drop the clothes altogether, aside from elaborate costumes composed entirely of jewelry that leave the important bits uncovered. Unfortunately for the young women of the Dawn Empire, this little bit of Foreign Fanservice gave Emperor Dayless some dark ideas.
• The evil Queen Nakari in the Solomon Kane story The Moon Of Skulls is naked save for a skirt of ostrich feathers, rich golden bracelets and anklets and a plumed helmet. Which for a modern reader would simply convey a barbarian Queen of the Darkest Africa, but which was also typical for the attire of cabaret dancers and strippers of the 1930s◊, when the story was published. A period reader would understand the titillating allusion much better.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Arianne Martell shows up at her secret rendezvous with Arys Oakheart wearing a golden snake bracelet on her arm and naught else. Arys was planning to end their Secret Relationship until he catches sight of her, whereupon a sex scene ensues.
• Downplayed, and combined with Fan Disservice in the fourth Temeraire novel, Empire of Ivory. At a fundraiser party for the Aerial Corps, Temeraire compliments an aging noblewoman in a low-cut dress in the style of her youth on her vulgar, gaudy emerald necklace, which happens to be the only thing covering her bosom.
• In Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love Lazarus Long's wife Dora sometimes wears a weapons belt, a set of ruby jewelry her husband gave her (several bracelets, rings, and a pendant)...and nothing else.
• In The Wheel of Time a minor character is framed for the theft of jewelry from the Maidens of the Spear. As a punishment the Maidens force her to serve them wearing nothing but the bracelets she (supposedly) stole from them.
• In the Lensman novels, Ilona of Lonabar, a very poor girl by her homeworld’s standards, wears only low grade jewelry: cheap beads in common metal. But she wears so much that she’s effectively, if minimally, clothed.

Live-Action TV

• Batman (1966): The Penguin once directed a movie starring Batman and Marsha, Queen of Diamonds (It Makes Sense in Context). Penguin seems to have had this trope in mind for a scene where Marsha takes a milk bath, wearing nothing but her diamonds. Aunt Harriet's Gotham City Film Decency League put a stop to it before it happened, though.
• CSI: NY: In "Summer in the City", Stella and Danny must solve the mysterious death of a famous designer found dead, wearing his latest creation which is a bra made of diamonds. In the course of the investigation, they interview the model who wore the bra for a photoshoot, and there are plenty of flashbacks to the shoot where she is wearing the diamond bra and nothing else.
• Defiance: Stahma Tarr tends to favor wearing jewelry and nothing more in-doors while bathing.

Music

• "Give Me a Try" by The Wombats
  But I just need you in that fur coat
  With only my necklace on underneath

Magazines

• An issue of National Geographic had a picture of a belt with huge gemstone beads and a quote from its creator, stating that he "imagined a woman emerging from the ocean wearing this belt and nothing else".
• In one Playboy pictorial, a model posed wearing a small fortune in diamonds. The magazine hired armed security during the shoot to ensure their safety.
• This outfit worn by Yamila Diaz-Rahi in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue was the inspiration for Dead Or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball's Venus (see below in Video Games).
• One issue of the German magazine Stern had on its cover a photograph of model Naomi Campbell nude except for jewelry.

Pinball

• Featured in Bally's Mata Hari pinball, which shows the title character wearing a gold-played Chainmail Bikini encrusted with rubies.

Professional Wrestling

• In 2005, Melina did a photo shoot for WWE's website where she was on a couch nude and barely covered by MNM's WWE Tag Team Title belts, while wearing a necklace and other jewelry.

Religion and Mythology

• In the Book of Esther, included in the Old Testament of The Bible, Queen Vashti is holding a banquet for the noblewomen of Persia, while her husband, King Ahasuerus (commonly believed to be Xerxes I), holds another banquet for his buddies to celebrate his recent victory. He drunkenly asks her to make an appearance before his guests wearing her crown. According to some scholars, she was to wear only her crown. Vashti refused, naturally, and Ahasuerus deposed her as queen and banished her on his buddies' advice.
• In Indian mythology, the Apsaras (a type of female nature spirit) are often depicted wearing some jewelry and little to nothing else.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons, mariliths (demons with the upper body of a six-armed woman and the lower body of a giant snake) are often depicted like this, wearing scant or no clothing but a great deal of jewelry. In fact, they frequently dress like this even while commanding demonic armies. This is all perfectly justified, since high-ranking demons have skin far tougher than any physical armor.
• Like the John Carter of Mars example in Literature above, this is the standard attire of the Lashunta in Pathfinder. Lashunta are the natives of one of Golarion's neighbour planets, Castrovel.
• Silessa, the Snake Queen, as seen in the cover for Ravenloft: Carnival's playbook is a beautiful elf maiden wearing only golden ornaments, chains and nothing else◊. Given her job as an exotic dancer, this is justified.

Video Games

• Sylea◊ in Champions of Norrath wears a golden necklace-shawl with two large gold medallions that cover up her breasts, along with armbands, earrings, rings, and bracelets. In fact, the only piece of clothing that she is wearing is a loincloth, and even that is adorned with gold.
• Dead Or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball had the game's most expensive swimsuit called the Venus, which is jewelry concealing the ladies' where it matters most. It is available for only one girl to purchase. To give it to the others, you have to really know the game inside and out.
• Desire demons◊ in Dragon Age had their upper bodies covered in gold ornaments and nothing else.
• Shiva in Final Fantasy XV wears an outfit made out of jewelry, which is the most revealing outfit worn by any female character in the game and one of the biggest in all her recurring appearances in the series to date. It was so revealing it was censored in the Chinese version of the game that replaced it with a one-piece suit instead.
• In the God of War series, the ladies in the sex mini-games tend to be (un)dressed this way. In the first game, the twin sisters are adorned in a very conspicuous gold ornaments, while in the second game, one of the bathing beauties in Rhodes wears jewelry on her shoulders.
• Flurrie in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Before you can recruit her into your party, you have to find her lost necklace, as she would feel completely scandalized without it.

Visual Art

• Older Than Steam: This was really popular with the French Mannerist painters known as the School of Fontainebleau. A typical painting shows a woman wearing an elaborate jewelled headdress, a gold choker, a gold necklace, pearl bracelets, several rings and nothing else. She's reaching into a jewel box for more rings.
• In Lucas Cranach the Elder's Cupid Complaining to Venus◊, the goddess of love appears clad only in gold necklaces and her hat.

Webcomics

• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Referenced, but doesn't occur. In an Omake, Matilda explains that despite not wearing regular clothing, she feels naked without her jewelry on. Another character is quick to point out that Matilda never wears jewelry.

Real Life

• A (possibly apocryphal and decidedly unsexy) male example comes from General Junot, Napoleon's first aide de camp, who, having lost his mind as a result of syphilis and repeated head trauma, once entered a ballroom wearing nothing but his belt and medals.
• On October 1, 2014, German model Micaela Schaefer showed up for star photographer Oliver Rath's book release party completely naked, wearing only shoes and jewelry and using her purse to cover her crotch.

---