Neck­lace by Jacque­line Stieger, 18ct gold with rough emer­alds, ja@grubersteiger.karoo.co.uk

Jew­elry this sum­mer is about hav­ing fun with color, tex­ture, and gold. As an ash blond with high­lights and green eyes, I usu­ally pre­fer a strong yel­low or pink cast to gold; I like these pieces to blend with my col­or­ing as if it were a nat­ural exten­sion of my arma­ture rather than a twin­kling appendage. Sam­ple all the hues; the appear­ance of yel­low metal (whether fine or cos­tume jew­elry) is vari­able, so try items with dif­fer­ent degrees of inten­sity and see what works best for you.

Since this sea­son is one of vibrant hues, tex­tured pieces offer a lit­tle sub­tlety and move­ment with­out clash­ing with your cou­ture. If you choose to go bold in a sin­gle color, try a bracelet or neck­lace where the stones com­pli­ment your main state­ment or the motif strikes a cohe­sive bal­ance with your back­drop. The over­all look must be flat­ter­ing, not merely styl­ish –there is a dif­fer­ence. I know all the mag­a­zines talk about the state­ment neck­lace, and that’s impor­tant trend-wise, but remem­ber that you should be wear­ing the orna­ment, it shouldn’t be wear­ing you.

Last week­end I wore a lovely black and pewter bro­cade with an antique sil­ver and paste neck­lace– I let the mono­chro­mat­ics serve as a pow­er­ful color state­ment, every­thing worked well, and it wasn’t a dif­fi­cult look to put together.

Check back later in the week when I review a new exhi­bi­tion: Cartier…100 years of Pas­sion and Free Spirit in Amer­ica. I’m attend­ing the press pre­view tomorrow…

Bracelet by Bar­bara Tip­ple, 22ct gold, plat­inum, bronze and 33 carats of nat­u­rally col­ored dia­monds, barbara.tipple@barbaratipple.co.uk

rings by Kerry Richard­son, bril­liant dia­monds and 18ct yel­low gold, www.kerry-richardson.com