If there’s one runway trend that has crossed all boundaries in recent seasons, it is that fashion loves gold. Designers are dotting their collections with long gold gowns — which seem more common than “little black dresses” — and working gold fabrics or accents into their pieces, whether for spring or fall, casual or evening.

In some cases, designers have personal reasons for using gold. Elie Saab showed a spring collection in Paris entirely devoted to gold — from sequined minidresses to flowing chiffon gowns — after he went to his native Beirut and was inspired by the intensity of the sun there. Donna Karan has created a capsule collection and a fragrance based on the material that she has used since her early days as a designer.

But no matter why individual designers choose to use gold, there is often a larger cultural force at work. For centuries, humans have used gold to show status, as a new exhibit — aptly named “Gold” — that opens Thursday at the American Museum of Natural History conveys.

“The earliest gold worked by humans in the record is from a cemetery in Bulgaria 6,000 years ago, in 4000 B.C., just after we get the evidence of social ranking or stratification,” the museum’s curator of Mexican and Central American archeology, Charles Spencer, said. “When institutionalized social differences appear, that’s when you see gold as ornaments.”

The use of gold to communicate rank was based largely on its natural properties.”Gold is not useful as a tool. It’s too malleable. It doesn’t make a good knife,” Mr. Spencer said. “What kind of society would go to the trouble to get something that is not useful as a tool, only an ornament? A society that was separated into higher and lower ranks.”

This approach to gold is consistent throughout the ancient world. The earliest gold in the New World was found during the Early Horizon period in Peru (800–200 BC). “We have some rather spectacular things from that period — chest ornaments, elaborate jars for drinking,” Mr. Spencer said. “The way today that you would convey high status by eating off of fine china or silver — those ideas have been around a long time.”

The use of gold spread north from Peru to Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico between 800 and 1000 A.D. Though these societies already had developed social ranking, gold gave them a new way of expressing it. “They abandoned earlier ways of marking status, like jade and shell,” Mr. Spencer said.

In anthropological terms, the interest in gold connects us to humans centuries ago. But in fashion terms, it connects to humans just decades ago. Gold took flight in the late 1970s and ’80s, when fashion was booming. As fabric and jewelry, the material made its way into high-end clothing. In some ways, it was a signifier of fashion status: Gold could separate the upper end of the fashion spectrum from the rest.

One creative force who brought gold to the fore was sculptor Robert Lee Morris. In 1981, he designed large gold jewelry in blade shapes for Calvin Klein’s runway collection, which was inspired by African Masai textiles and included gold fabrics. In 1984, Mr. Morris collaborated with Donna Karan on her groundbreaking “Seven Easy Pieces” collection that incorporated his gold accessories with her body-conscious black garments.

Their working relationship continues to this day, with Mr. Morris’s designs in the current Donna Karan Gold collection. But as Ms. Karan writes in the forward of “Robert Lee Morris: The Power of Jewelry,” there was time when fashion took a hiatus from such flashy pronouncements. “There was a long stretch in the ’90s when we didn’t work together. Fashion had gone pure and minimal, and accessories felt wrong.”

Not so today, in an era when accessories are driving the fashion business — and the shinier the better. Chanel’s spring collection included models with gold bracelets piled high on their wrists. Gold toned hardware appears on handbags from most luxury houses. Gold charms like Louis Vuitton’s gold lock appear in the most unlikely of places, like the heel of a black stiletto.

As for fabrics, metallics show no sign of slowing down. The current fall Ralph Lauren collection includes a pleated gold skirt worn with a cozy sweater jacket for day — and a tight gold gown for evening. The spring collection for Tibi was inspired by Egypt, designer Amy Smilovic said; she showed two gold dresses. “We did it in a more casual way, with a jersey fabric,” she said. “It’s optimistic and happy. No one is ever dressing in gold and looking sour.”