Karl Lager­feld was feel­ing the cold — faux fur and tum­bled agates (or poured glass) col­lided,  sil­ver  ici­cles dripped off the neck in a frozen water­fall and bracelets were lay­ered with stone like sed­i­men­tary rock for­ma­tions. Brrrrrrrr…hot choco­late anyone?

Chanel Fall 2010

Chanel Fall 2010

Chanel Fall 2010

Chanel Fall 2010

Chanel Fall 2010

Rachel McAdams in Lor­raine Schwartz earrings

Carey Mul­li­gan in Fred Leighton 19^th cen­tury earrings

Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal in Fred Leighton vin­tage earrings

Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal in Fred Leighton vin­tage bracelet

Vera Farmiga in Fred Leighton

Amanda Seyfried in Lor­raine Schwartz bracelets

Eliz­a­beth Banks in Fred Leighton

For putting on the show well into the first hour! I was among the 3.1 mil­lion view­ers with­out the Oscar tele­cast and believe you me, I was scram­bling to find cov­er­age some­how, some­where, with­out hav­ing to drag my hus­band to a local bar with a satel­lite dish. I wasn’t rel­ish­ing the thought of hav­ing to take notes while try­ing to keep bal­ance on a bar stool, and nurse a sin­gle glass of wine for four hours. Four looong hours, I might add. Loved the two Mas­ters of Cer­e­mony  – keep them — and shorten the rest for next time.

As I hope some of you heard this morn­ing when I was on Morn­ing Liv­ing (my sixth guest appear­ance, I’m very proud to say!), there was a rever­sal of for­tune on the red car­pet. For­tune, mean­ing the rar­i­fied jew­elry that com­monly accom­pa­nies all the cou­ture worn by celebri­ties. The big, bold and brash was replaced by the mostly small­ish, sim­pler, and in some cases, sweet.  Except for Ms. Mariah Carey who main­tained her bling-bling diva sta­tus and yet, kept things a lit­tle less con­spic­u­ous than she did for the Golden Globes. I even liked her use of the dia­mond brooch at the hip — kind of a cool touch. There were a few dra­matic moments, and some trends that could be adapted to civil­ian life too — which if you heard my seg­ment this morn­ing, are not dif­fi­cult to emu­late.  I wel­come your style ques­tions, espe­cially ones that I can reprint and answer here on the blog so that every­one can ben­e­fit. These are images of the best red car­pet jew­elry moments:

Jen­nifer Lopez wear­ing Cartier earrings

Demi Moore wear­ing Van Cleef & Arpels vin­tage bracelets

Sarah Jes­sica Parker in Fred Leighton bracelets

Art, in form or in sub­stance, is the cra­dle for fashion’s rev­e­la­tions. The run­way is a can­vas, sculp­ture, or gem of a designer’s inven­tion. Marni’s Con­suelo Cas­tiglioni took what looked like a hatch­ing egg, or a dinosaur’s ocu­lar cav­ity (and per­haps still, this could be another Avatar moment, a theme that took the run­ways by storm), and strung them together as asym­met­ri­cal beads. These off-round ele­ments were worn primly, close to the neck, ascrib­ing to the seduc­tion, or rap­to­r­ial, that sim­mers beneath the quirky clothes. Gareth Pugh in Paris was moved by Art Deco. The fan shapes and chevon pat­terns employed by the designer are found through­out the period, and par­tic­u­larly in the dec­o­ra­tive arts. Art Deco jew­elry, circa 1915 through the 1930s, is among the more com­pelling, cov­etable and last­ing of these expressions.

Art Deco Carved Emer­ald Ring www.vicmart.com

Gareth Pugh Fall 2010

Gareth Pugh Fall 2010

Marni Fall 2010

The Gar­den Series ring by Hal­ley Bar­ney, From Now Until Eternity

Walked the Jew­el­ers of Amer­ica Show yes­ter­day at the bustling Jacob Jav­its Cen­ter in NYC. The con­ven­tion cen­ter was host­ing two other exhi­bi­tions, The NYT’s Travel Show and The Inter­na­tional Restau­rant and Food Ser­vice Show. Need­less to say, it was a com­pletely fun day for those of us who can­not live on bread alone. So snack­ing my way through the crowds, I finally arrived at my intended des­ti­na­tion. The JA show was its usual affair: a mix of stalls with jew­elry from every cor­ner of the world, from eth­nic jew­elry and Swarovski crys­tal­ized casu­ally tossed onto tables for a quick look-see to multi-carat gem­stones mounted in gor­geous designer set­tings and glit­ter­ing away in securely locked cases. Han­dling the pieces is key, and no, one does not want to take every­thing home. The best is cov­etable, yet not nec­es­sar­ily afford­able. However…by care­fully inspect­ing each item that stirs your curi­ousity, one quickly learns the dif­fer­ence between the ho-hum and the truly excep­tional. Some­times there are sur­prises; I did pur­chase some­thing spe­cial. The best part?  It was rea­son­ably priced, and won­der­fully made by a stu­dio artisan.

The image above is of the ver­meil (18K gold over ster­ling sil­ver) Gar­den Series ring I bought from Hal­ley Bar­ney of From Now Until Eter­nity. Putting aside the mati­nee mar­quee name, the ring to which I took an imme­di­ate shine is an over­sized flower head, entirely hand­crafted, and made in the lost wax process, an ancient form of metal cast­ing. The best way to under­stand this labor-intensive met­al­smithing tech­nique is to see it done, so here is a link to beau­ti­fully pro­duced video that takes you step-by-step through the lost wax cast­ing process.

Later in the week, I will post images of the bet­ter pieces I came across at the JA show.  REMINDER: Next Mon­day, March 8, 2010 at 9:30 am on Sir­ius 112/XM 157 I  will once again be a guest on Martha Stew­art radio’s Morn­ing Liv­ing with Kim Fer­nan­dez and Betsy Karet­nick. The talk is Bespoke Oscar Jewels…spoken to you . Learn how to tai­lor those red car­pet looks to your own lifestyle. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily need the gen­uine arti­cle to cre­ate a charis­matic moment. It’s more about edit­ing, a few secrets, and being true to your own idea of pol­ished. Call in, ask a question…

Enam­els of the World 1700–2000 The Khalili Collections

The cat­a­log, Enam­els of the World, is for any­one who has admired the textile-like and gem­stone effects recre­ated in the enam­eled jew­els and objet d’art of  Peter Carl Fabergé, Rene Lalique, and Cartier, and of course, the pan­theon of enam­elist– jew­el­ers who fol­lowed in their foot­steps.  The New York Times’ Vic­to­ria Gomel­sky wrote a superb review of the exhi­bi­tion, which this cat­a­log accom­pa­nied, and the arti­cle may be read in its entirety here. A slide show of the exhi­bi­tion can be viewed  on The Khalili Fam­ily Trust web­site. For those of us in the North­east who are peer­ing out our win­dows at the mass of icy white so heav­ily bow­ing the branches on the trees, mak­ing them appear like the sway­ing trunks of ele­phants on the march, these vivid works remind us that spring is around the cor­ner, and with it, that emblem of life renewed: color. Have a safe and warm weekend!

Before I visit NY Fash­ion Week I want to men­tion the Anto­nio Pineda ret­ro­spec­tive enti­tled, Sil­ver Seduc­tion, that will show at the Museum of New Mex­ico from June 4, 2010 through Jan­u­ary 2, 2011. If you aren’t famil­iar with Pineda’s immac­u­lately exe­cuted work,  then per­mit me to intro­duce you to a bril­liant Taxco designer whose jew­elry not only rose to the level of mod­ernist art but was also wear­able in a way that its appear­ance belied its inge­nious con­struc­tion. What seemed a rigid mass of metal was in fact artic­u­lated, yield­ing com­fort­ably to the body. A gem­stone floated in a set­ting, seem­ingly with­out sup­port, almost as if it was secured to its metal­lic arma­ture by magic. The mechan­ics of Pineda’s pieces func­tioned invis­i­bly to the admir­ing eye, yet not to this accom­plished met­al­smith. The designer lived a long, suc­cess­ful, and hap­pily, a cel­e­brated life: he passed away at the age of 90 in Decem­ber 2009.  If trav­el­ing to New Mex­ico is not in your imme­di­ate future, there is a very sat­is­fy­ing, and I would ven­ture to pre­dict, highly col­lectible cat­a­log that may be pur­chased from the museum, or Amazon.com.

And now for thoughts on jew­elry for Fall 2010 so far:

Spare.

Is that all there is to say?

Yep…pretty much.

Marc Jacobs, who has pre­vi­ously adorned his run­way with scads of ear­rings, col­liers, and cuffs in vary­ing pro­por­tions and pres­ence, showed none at all. Or at least from what I could dis­cern. A tell-tale sign was the lack of the detail shots on Style.com. He left our tongues wag­ging about the clothes, and that was all. However…he did leave the idea of adding a bit of some­thing, open to inter­pre­ta­tion. Our inter­pre­ta­tion, not his. The neck­lines fell into two camps, high and low, both of which can make for orig­i­nal styling with jew­els — a more per­sonal take than Jacobs has rec­om­mended in the past. Loved the looks below.. open can­vases for possibility.

Marc Jacobs Fall 2010

Marc Jacobs Fall 2010

It was dif­fi­cult to tell from run­way images if Donna Karan’s sartorially-biased orna­men­ta­tion was sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from her clothes. Jet-like shine in the form of beaded neck­pieces raised the spirit of the sooty palette, giv­ing the looks a con­tem­po­rary sex­i­ness despite the mid-sixteenth-century sug­ges­tion of a ruff (col­lar). Per­haps the fash­ion take-away here is to con­sider the jewel, in color and tex­ture, part and par­cel of the whole ensem­ble rather than a con­tribut­ing ele­ment to the assemblage.

Donna Karan Fall 2010

Donna Karan Fall 2010

Darn­ley por­trait of Eliz­a­beth I

To see my Roman­tic Jew­elry seg­ment on MARTHA, please click here.

You may also watch any of the other seg­ments and/or view the show in its entirety (FYI: all of Martha’s guests, myself included, share a spe­cial Valentine’s Day mem­ory at the very top of the hour)

Please note: The jew­elry that was part of my seg­ment on MARTHA is for sale at the fol­low­ing gal­leries in New York:
–Pri­mav­era Gallery
–Kentshire Gal­leries
–Doyle and Doyle
Con­tact infor­ma­tion for these anti­quar­ian retail­ers is listed here.

Tiffany & Co. (Amer­i­can, 1837-present), Pauld­ing Farn­ham (Amer­i­can, 1859–1927), designer.
Iris Brooch, (Pink tour­ma­lines, green gar­net, plat­inum, c.1900–1901). Pri­mav­era Gallery, NY
Photo: Howard Agri­esti, The Cleve­land Museum of Art

Begin­ning in the 1840s, jew­elry design reflected a wild fancy for all things organic. It was as if each orna­ment cap­tured the cycle of life in a sin­gle, lyri­cal moment and immor­tal­ized it for­ever. The fren­zied col­lect­ing of plants and flow­ers added a new lex­i­con of exotic species to the bejew­eled menagerie. Dia­mond flo­ral bou­quets over­flowed with grad­u­ated cas­cades of dia­mond drops, imi­tat­ing rain or seeds falling from flower heads. This style of orna­men­ta­tion was known as “en pampille” and remained fash­ion­able until the 1850s. Cor­sage orna­ments, enor­mous gem-intense brooches, were worn on the bodice of a ball gown. Often this impor­tant jew­eled acces­sory took the form of a flo­ral spray set with trem­bling with flower heads. This was accom­plished by mount­ing each sprig and stem on a spring, per­mit­ting it to quiver with the slighted breeze. By the glow of a candle-lit ball­room, these bou­quets floated across the dance floor leav­ing glit­ter in their wake.

Mother Nature’s pro­duce was held in high esteem at the 1867 Uni­ver­sal Expo­si­tion in Paris. Botan­i­cal arrange­ments were seen every­where, depict­ing their sub­jects with amaz­ing accu­racy in gem­stones and pre­cious met­als. The jew­eler and artist Oscar Massin became known for his sen­si­tively repro­duced flow­ers. Designer Leon Rou­venant dis­played a jew­eled life-size branch of lilac, to be worn as a hair orna­ment or brooch; the jewel was pur­chased by Empress Eugènie of France, whose col­lec­tion of the best of French gold­smithing was unsur­passed. In the United States, the Tiffany school, taught and devel­oped by head designer Edward C. Moore, devoted its efforts to edu­cat­ing its stu­dents in the study of botany. The school’s library pos­sessed an impres­sive col­lec­tion of ref­er­ence books as well as dried and pressed spec­i­mens to be used by stu­dents to prac­tice their water­color and sketch­ing tech­niques.


 Pauld­ing Farn­ham, Tiffany’s lesser known but no less bril­liant designer of jew­elry, cre­ated glo­ri­ously beau­ti­ful flower-form brooches, hair orna­ments and cor­sage dec­o­ra­tions for the Paris Expo­si­tion of 1889. In par­tic­u­lar, his two dozen orchid jew­els which were designed specif­i­cally for this event, received the high­est praise. “Twenty-four species of orchids, which are so faith­fully repro­duced that one would almost doubt that they are enamel, so well do they sim­u­late the real flow­ers.” Orchids were a sym­bol of wealth and sta­tus dur­ing the last quar­ter of the nine­teenth cen­tury, and orchid fever was at its height when Tiffany & Co. dis­played its prize exam­ples at the Paris Expo­si­tion. Shortly after, col­lec­tors of hot house orchids, such as the financier Jay Gould, began to gather Farnham’s bejew­eled ones too. 

An iris brooch, designed by Farn­ham, was pur­chased at the 1900 Paris Expo­si­tion by rail­road mag­nate Henry Wal­ters. Mounted with curved petals of Mon­tana sap­phires, flash­ing blue to deep laven­der, and accented by yel­low sap­phires and dia­mond vein­ing, the orna­ment remains a prime exam­ple of Vic­to­rian nat­u­ral­ism done with Amer­i­can flair — and with mate­ri­als sourced in the United States. 

The exam­ple above is a sim­i­lar iris brooch cre­ated by Farn­ham, this par­tic­u­lar one may have been given to his wife.

Peter Carl Fabergé bril­liantly repro­duced flo­ral arrange­ments in gold, enamel, pre­cious gem­stones and rock crys­tal. Empress Alexan­dra Feodor­ovna owned at least 20 exam­ples of these flower arrange­ments. Her col­lec­tion included sev­eral vari­eties of flow­ers and plants, includ­ing holly, catkins, sprigs of rowan, wild cher­ries, rasp­ber­ries, cran­ber­ries, car­na­tions, chrysan­the­mums, pan­sies, field daisies and a minia­ture pine tree. The most cel­e­brated arrange­ment, a bas­ket of lily of the val­ley sprout­ing from a vel­vet mass of green moss, was a favorite of the Empress. It sat on her desk from 1896 until 1917, the start of the Rev­o­lu­tion. The bas­ket was crafted in woven yel­low gold and the moss was mag­i­cally spun from green gold and plat­inum wire (this was before the com­mon use of plat­inum in the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury) that had been left unpol­ished in patches, and clipped. Upon each stem grew leaves of carved nephrite, and bloom­ing above the foliage were pearl flow­ers topped with rose-cut dia­mond petals.

Nineteeth-century cameo cuf­flinks of labrador dogs carved in Labradorite. Image from www.vicmart.com

Labradorite is one of my favorite min­er­als used in jew­elry. I was first intro­duced to it many years ago, while work­ing at Edith Weber & Asso­ciates. As Edith and I were pack­ing jew­elry for an upcom­ing show, she handed me an antique ring set with a devil’s head carved from Labradorite. The superb sculpt­ing of the gem and its “Labradores­cence,” which we rec­og­nize as iri­des­cence in lus­trous blues and greens, brought Lucifer’s face to life, almost, it seemed, from a light within. Since then I have been obsessed with this omi­nous gem. Labradorite was orig­i­nally dis­cov­ered dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tury in coastal Labrador, a region of Atlantic Canada. It has also been mined in other coun­tries. Col­or­ful exam­ples are the most desir­able and this link illus­trates a wide vari­ety of lively specimens.

A fine exam­ple of period Labradorite jew­elry is rare, so the cuf­flinks pic­tured above are an unusual find.

Sorry about the no-show on Thurs­day and Fri­day — I’m back down from the clouds, rested, and feet planted firmly on the ground. Thank you for your patience.

In review­ing the images from the Chanel and Chris­t­ian Dior Spring Cou­ture 2010 shows, the most appar­ent design schematic for jew­elry was pro­por­tion. It seemed that Karl Lager­feld saw the nineteenth-century cor­sage brooch, a large, impos­ing orna­ment, as hav­ing con­tem­po­rary rel­e­vance in a more real­is­tic, some­what smaller, inter­pre­ta­tion. The beaded details, pastes, and embroi­deries in his designs were placed higher, closer to the face; a flat­ter­ing idea based on the turn of the twentieth-century way of styling jew­elry. The top of one dress was cre­ated from chains of glit­ter­ing white crys­tals. This was the col­lier, a choker length jewel, as both neck­line and adorn­ment. The effi­ciency of the idea read as the kind of bril­liant short­hand, which Larg­er­feld does masterfully.

How charm­ing are these fil­a­ment insecta scat­ter pins? There is an ease, a ver­sa­til­ity, to the con­cept of sug­gested form rather than a lit­eral one. These pins would float equally well on a softly printed dress or casual coat with­out ref­er­ence to sea­son, or even to species. Mod­ernist jew­elry design­ers of the 1940s and ‘50s took this con­cept and turned it into an art form.

John Gal­liano for Chris­t­ian Dior pushed the ele­va­tor but­ton and took us to the pent­house of romance. The clothes, small waisted with cas­cad­ing skirts and crisply nipped jack­ets, were paired with antique-inspired jew­els of grand-grander-grandest pro­por­tions. The enor­mity of the paste drops and marquise-shaped crys­tals served as the tongue-in-cheek punc­tu­a­tion to the whole. Irony is a uni­ver­sal motif, and when done with wit, trans­verses our col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion as smoothly as water on glass. You could almost cast the jew­els in Tim Burton’s Alice In Won­der­land. All the gor­geous exag­ger­a­tions apply, so back into the ele­va­tor, and down the rabbit-hole we go…

Chris­t­ian Dior Spring 2010