The kind of infor­ma­tion posted here isn’t some­thing you will find in your aver­age (or above aver­age) fash­ion mag­a­zine. And it won’t be a bor­ing recount­ing of jew­elry his­tory either. That’s my first promise to you. It’s just that as a free­lance writer/jewelry historian/soon-to-be book author, I want to offer more use­ful infor­ma­tion than just a gor­geously arranged page of rings or bracelets with the words, “price upon request” cap­tioned beneath. You can “oooh” and “aaah” to your heart’s con­tent but what are you actu­ally tak­ing away from this experience?

The bet­ter “books” (jour­nal­ism par­lance for fash­ion mag­a­zines) offer all types of infor­ma­tion about the his­tory or ori­gin of a given style of dress. Yet how many times do we need to read about the unique genius of YSL, Karl Lager­feld, or Marc Jacobs and their road to star­dom? And the same goes for shoes and bags. I’m not say­ing that this infor­ma­tion isn’t inter­est­ing or even use­ful. It gives us per­spec­tive. By read­ing Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, or Nylon (I read all of them), we gain an edu­ca­tion and insight that pro­vides us with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of fash­ion. The next time we shop (H&M, Top­shop, Uniqlo… any­where, not just Saks), our choices are bet­ter informed. The same approach should be applied to jew­elry too, and sadly, it’s not.

Of course there was a time when jew­elry was an inte­gral part of fash­ion, and in fact was viewed as more a dec­o­ra­tive art than a mere acces­sory. Jew­elry had an active role in cul­tural expres­sion. Ancient and eth­nic tra­di­tions were cel­e­brated in gold, bronze, brass and sil­ver and con­tem­po­rary expres­sions of lux­ury were gem-laden and bright. Actors wore their own jew­elry as evi­dence of their self-expression and, yes, their suc­cess. Sarah Bern­hardt wore her Art Nou­veau (by Lalique no less) neck­laces on stage and Mae West’s incred­i­ble col­lec­tion of Belle Époque jew­els made her first famous as “Dia­mond Lil”. In the 1930s, Mar­lene Diet­rich wore her cabo­chon emer­ald (of roughly 128 carats) and pave-set, baguette and bril­liant dia­mond bracelet in sev­eral of her films. Glam­our was some­thing tan­gi­ble then and jew­elry served as the very def­i­n­i­tion of it. Reflect­ing more than fash­ion, jew­elry mir­rored our cul­tural sophis­ti­ca­tion. It was a refined and fin­ish­ing touch gen­er­a­tions of women took seri­ously, even if it was as uncom­pli­cated as pin­ning a lovely sprig of enamel and rhine­stone flow­ers on a spring coat. Today it is rare to see a suit jacket or blazer unadorned.

Some mag­a­zines try, at times, to give us a more com­plete pic­ture of how jew­elry and fash­ion work together, but they often fail to explain why the pair­ing suc­ceeds and how the ele­ments work in tan­dem with one another. Under­stand­ing jew­elry isn’t very dif­fer­ent from being a sports fan or an art lover; it’s mostly about under­stand­ing a few key con­cepts and then apply­ing them to your own aes­thetic. The result will be far more cap­ti­vat­ing and per­son­ally inspir­ing. My blog is about shar­ing ideas that don’t reach us in any other medium. Jew­elry is some­thing that can be beau­ti­ful, fas­ci­nat­ing, chal­leng­ing, cheap or costly—the dif­fer­ence between under­stand­ing all of these adjec­tives is knowledge.

As con­sumers, infor­ma­tion is some­thing we are all enti­tled to and should demand, espe­cially since fine jew­elry is expen­sive and a long-term invest­ment. Fash­ion books, with their numer­ous ads, should offer us more than just an up-close and glossy view of their adver­tis­ers’ wares. Tell us why it’s impor­tant, why it’s inno­v­a­tive or why it’s a clas­sic. New design­ers are fea­tured fre­quently, and that’s great, but the jew­elry usu­ally doesn’t live up to all the hype. It’s about shar­ing enthu­si­asm for design and to do that they must offer us a broader view, from the iconic to the con­tem­po­rary. As one fash­ion direc­tor told me after I’d pitched yet another bejew­eled story idea that she rejected, “This kind of enthu­si­asm just doesn’t get into the magazine.”

That’s too bad. I’ll just have to spread the word myself, one post at a time.