There will be no mis­tak­ing this jew­elry for fine, or even good cos­tume. This col­lec­tion for big box retailer, Tar­get, is cre­ated by the fash­ion favored design team of Karen Erick­son and Vicki Bea­mon, is, well, very, very…faux. Not that I was expect­ing any­thing less, how­ever I was hop­ing to see bet­ter crafts­man­ship (this stuff is much too flimsy and rough-edged!). The crys­tal stones are uneven in qual­ity, the smaller ones are bright and reflec­tive, and the large, showy exam­ples have a cheap plas­tic appearance.

The con­cepts have charm, and that is exactly the way they are exe­cuted, as charms on a chain. For one pen­dant neck­lace, a big col­or­ful ball of rhine­stones hangs from links; there is also an all white stone and pearl ver­sion which has a warm weather feel. My main objec­tion to the pen­dants I han­dled were this: they are not smoothly set and caught on my knit top con­stantly. I can­not imag­ine wear­ing this object against my skin. That said, had the piece been bet­ter pro­duced, and per­haps given more elab­o­ra­tion, such as tak­ing a few of these spher­i­cal drops, in vary­ing sizes, and encir­cling them around the neck. This would give it over the top whimsy, and dra­matic punch, or, in more styl­ish terms, trans­form­ing it into a state­ment piece; the kind of jewel all the mag­a­zines are tout­ing these days.

The gem-intense rings and cuff bracelets are the best of the col­lec­tion, although again, here I have issues with the scale of the rings and the implied war­ranty of attrac­tive­ness that a designer con­tracts with her/his audi­ence. Please note: implied war­ranty of attrac­tive­ness is a made-up term (by me) to mean that the orna­ment has to look good on the wearer. Oth­er­wise, really, what’s the point? The col­ored flower ring is lovely to look at — quickly. Up close, there is a hard false­ness to its over­all appear­ance, and it is enor­mous. Not sure who can wear this? Lil­liputians (in Gulliver’s Trav­els) could use it as a jun­gle gym for their kids. As I tried it on, my first reac­tion was to string it on a chain; it has a big, fun, sculp­tural qual­ity that inspires you to hang it from your neck, framed within two shoul­ders, rather than wear it ungainly on a sin­gle digit.

With vin­tage cos­tume jew­elry there is a sub­text — such as fol­low­ing a fash­ion trend, or mim­ic­k­ing fine jew­elry. It is always meant to flat­ter the wearer, or her cloth­ing. So I’m not quite get­ting what Erick­son Bea­mon is doing with this col­lec­tion as a whole. It seemed as though they had devel­oped pieces that recall ear­lier jew­elry and…that was that. I also must say that at the Tar­get I vis­ited, there was a neck­lace from their Merona line lay­ing rather close by, and it wasn’t until I flipped the tags that I real­ized that each item was from a dif­fer­ent collection.

With all due respect, at prices that aren’t all that inex­pen­sive, rel­a­tively speak­ing, and that can be com­pared to the recent Dean Har­ris for Tar­get col­lec­tion (crafted of ster­ling sil­ver), where is the fash­ion equity here? Are we to buy this col­lec­tion sim­ply because it’s by Erick­son Bea­mon, or because it’s great and by Erick­son Bea­mon? My guess is that most con­sumers now want to buy some­thing fab­u­lous and wal­let friendly, no mat­ter what tax bracket they embrace.