Dean Har­ris for Tar­get, Ster­ling sil­ver leaf charm necklace

When I received an email today inform­ing me of the launch of Dean Har­ris’ new jew­elry col­lec­tion for Tar­get, I logged on with reserved expec­ta­tions. Their past offer­ings have been uneven in terms of style and qual­ity. Har­ris is a self-taught jew­elry designer and as it would seem from his bio, very much a fash­ion dar­ling; his jew­elry has graced the run­ways of Bill Blass, Marc Jacobs, Derek Lam, Peter Som, Doo Ri, and Chado Ralph Rucci. Eight years ago, he won the Perry Ellis Award for best new acces­sory designer.

So with all those kudos and air kisses pre­ced­ing him, what did he do for Tar­get? The forty-six piece col­lec­tion is a loose inter­pre­ta­tion of nat­ural and stock motifs: leaves, flow­ers, vines, hearts, and peace signs. He also tosses a few semi-precious gems into the mix, with clear, pink, green quartz and rhy­o­lite, an attrac­tive stone that is sim­i­lar in appear­ance to gran­ite. All of these orna­ments are exe­cuted in good old ster­ling sil­ver. Har­ris’ jew­elry for his own line is done in eighteen-karat yel­low gold so that rein­ter­pre­ta­tion in ster­ling is plau­si­ble and a bonus for Tar­get shop­pers. When view­ing the col­lec­tion online, it seemed a pleas­ant range of wear­able items.

How­ever, I couldn’t write an in-depth assess­ment of a col­lec­tion that I hadn’t actu­ally seen. So I hopped in my car and drove to two dif­fer­ent stores. The first only had eight pieces on dis­play; I pur­chased one item and then took a ride over to another store. They didn’t have the col­lec­tion in their cases yet. Need­less to say, I wasn’t happy. I don’t like being lured with­out reward.

So here’s the scoop on some of the pieces that I was able to touch and try on. Let me say first that Har­ris’ take on adorn­ment is del­i­cate so I was a lit­tle con­fused as to why Tar­get chose to explore these sil­hou­ettes now. As you must already know from the Sep­tem­ber edi­to­ri­als, big is big­ger than ever. Col­or­ful, bold, gem-a-licious jew­elry has exploded on the scene like a tor­nado –a whirling dervish of decol­letage decoration.

I thought that the sin­gle quartz gems on cord, espe­cially the rock crys­tal exam­ple, were sim­ple and effec­tive, if not an orig­i­nal idea; these longish pieces work well when worn with other items in the col­lec­tion or will lend a zen-like calm when left on its own. I tried on the Twisted Vine Ring, which had a solid feel and was nicely made. The Peace charm bracelet didn’t move me. As much as I want the greater world to get it’s act together, this 1960s sym­bol of good will doesn’t wield the same power that it once did; what we wear around our wrists isn’t as impor­tant as how we con­duct our­selves.
I pretty much felt the same way about the Vine Heart motif too. It didn’t posses enough drama to make it orna­men­tal. The last cri­tique I have about the col­lec­tion over­all is that it wasn’t as com­pelling, per­haps, as Har­ris’ other work is and that of another much-loved designer of jew­elry that is inspired by the organic, Ted Muehling. I have wit­nessed many a vis­ceral response to Muehling’s pieces. The motifs in any type of jew­elry must inspire the pur­chase. It’s not just about a name attached to a bracelet but what that indi­vid­ual has to say in the course of design­ing that bracelet that mat­ters to us as collectors.

Ok… so what I did like was the ster­ling sil­ver leaf charm neck­lace. In fact that is the one piece that I bought and it is illus­trated above. It has lots of move­ment. The high-polish on the sil­ver “leaves” catches the light in a way that is very flat­ter­ing and the piece fills out a v-shaped neck­line with a lot more pres­ence than you can dis­cern from just peer­ing at it through the case. When fash­ion turns its high heels, and it will, on all that is fun and faux, I think lyri­cal sim­plic­ity may be wait­ing in the wings for its cur­tain call.