It’s the only type of pin that I didn’t dis­cuss in my newly released book on brooches. Pins can cause drama, and not a lit­tle bit of trou­ble. Simon Doo­nen felt the prick of Andre Leon Tally’s tur­ban pin when he spoke at the CFDA Awards on June 2^nd. Not­ing the glo­ri­ous plat­inum and dia­mond orna­ment from Fred Leighton, Mr. Doo­nen quipped about it being a “rental” and sug­gest­ing that he “hock it and use the result­ing moolah to fund my Antwerp House­wives show”. Clearly the com­ment was intended as a joke, but Mr. Tally wasn’t amused. Mr. Doo­nen, a retail exec­u­tive and fix­ture at Barney’s New York, soon real­ized the dan­ger of a hair-pin turn of a phrase and admit­ted that he should have minded his pins and Q’s.

In any case, I did not add a tur­ban pin to my book and so here I will elab­o­rate on them here briefly. A tur­ban or Das­taar, as a Sikh tur­ban is called, is an arti­cle of faith. A tur­ban pin is a sym­bol of ded­i­ca­tion and is worn on the front of the tur­ban. This kind of head wrap and orna­ment has been worn by those of nearly all reli­gious beliefs, and in fact it was said that Moses wore one. They have also been lyri­cally depicted in paint­ings by Rem­brandt and Ingres.