LONDON • While announcing the British Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had illegally suspended Parliament, Lady Brenda Hale - the court's first female president - wore a brooding fantastical diamante spider brooch.

Its exact species was up for debate, though many social media observers thought the animal shape on the right shoulder of her black dress closely resembled the flesh-eating camel spider.

They also thought it was a silent message to Mr Johnson, a man often seen as unaccustomed to facing consequences for his actions.

"We stan a brooch queen," Mr Tom Rasmussen, author of Diary Of A Drag Queen, wrote on Twitter, using social media shorthand for obsessive love.

One particularly imaginative sleuth wondered if Lady Hale, 74, could be referring to Boris The Spider, a 1966 song by The Who, the lyrics of which include: "Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly/Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly/He's come to a sticky end."

Others breathed a sigh of relief; this year's Halloween costume, finally sorted.

Within hours, Balcony Shirts, a British T-shirt company, started selling a "Lady Hale Spider Brooch T-shirt", featuring a silver spider motif.

It was the most heralded use of a brooch in politics since Ms Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state under former United States president Bill Clinton.

In 2009, she published a book, Read My Pins: Stories From A Diplomat's Jewel Box, and the following year lent more than 200 of her brooches to an exhibition at the Smithsonian Castle.

Ms Albright's pin penchant began in the mid-1990s, while she was ambassador to the United Nations. The Iraqi press referred to her as an "unparalleled serpent", so she wore a snake brooch to her next meeting on Iraq.

She was the only woman on the Security Council at the time, and she has said in many interviews that she came to see her costume jewellery choices as an asset, a neat way to illustrate her opinions or intentions.

For example, after learning that a conference room near her State Department office had been bugged by the Russians, she wore a giant bug to her next meeting with them.

By contrast, Lady Hale's brooches arguably leave room for debate and speculation. They also echo the style that has become her signature.

For her official Supreme Court portrait, she wore a large, bejewelled centipede. At other times, she has worn a reclining fox, a giant gold butterfly, a spider web, a gingerbread man and various species of frogs.

Her look seems to celebrate the accessory's associations with older women, while simultaneously toying with ideas of appropriateness. The spider was both traditional and rebellious.

After all, on a bespectacled grey-haired woman in black, the large spider conjured thoughts of hocus-pocus, of cauldrons and curses. It suggested female power - call it "Big Witch Energy".

And who is more scared of who?

NYTIMES