Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond

The spider brooch, worn to deliver the prorogation judgment on September 24, 2019 As president of the UK Supreme Court, Lady Hale read out the unanimous ruling that Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament had been unlawful while wearing a large spider brooch. Within hours the internet had decided it meant a web of lies. She has always denied any hidden message and says she never gave much thought to which creature happened to be on her lapel. Yet she came to embrace the image enough to call her autobiography Spider Woman. Of everything on this list, it is the purest case of a brooch whose meaning was made by its audience, and then adopted by its wearer.