3.1 Philip Lim Spring 2010

To begin, there was no run­ning fash­ion nar­ra­tive, save for the far too evi­dent ban­gle, rein­vented in only a few clever forms and, heaven help us, seen on nearly every run­way. Despite this yawn­ing thread, the jew­elry con­cepts were designer-specific — each vary­ing per­spec­tive con­tributed to cre­at­ing a vir­tual how-to-dress-with-jewelry handbook.

Doo.Ri Spring 2010

3.1 Philip Lim, Doo.Ri, and Zack Posen chose abstrac­tion­ist forms in jew­elry. Posen in par­tic­u­lar stole not a lit­tle from Sal­vador Dali’s infa­mous Ruby Lips motif by turn­ing it into a plas­tic, multi-hued emblem, and toss­ing it on the clothes like cheeky con­fetti. Lim’s neck pieces of crum­pled metal hung from black rib­bons and chain con­nected to his clothes’ geo­met­ric under­cur­rent. Shadow played off the asym­met­ri­cal folds of the gleam­ing bright yel­low metal, sug­gest­ing gold nuggets in their raw state. A sim­i­lar metal­lic per­spec­tive shone on Doo.Ri’s spring run­way; her cloth­ing, drawn from a color spec­trum inspired by var­i­ous alloys, was aligned with feather-light orna­ments that echoed Alexan­der Calder in curve and line yet kept the cloth­ing buoy­ant, not drown­ing in deriv­a­tive association.

Marc By Marc Jacobs Spring 2010

The inde­pen­dant bejew­eled their cat­walks by storm. Anna Sui took her acces­sories and make frol­ick­ing fun out of the effort. Pen­dant neck­laces and beaded bracelets were girl­ish, cutie-pie, and cat-nippy all at once, which was keep­ing with the idea of jew­elry and clothes as work­ing as a sin­gle unit of style rather than piec­ing together sep­a­rate ele­ments. It would be dif­fi­cult to envi­sion this jew­elry worn with any­thing else other than her designs. Going back briefly (very) to the ban­gle busi­ness, Marc Jacobs for his Lit­tle Marc line took the idea to the neck; a cir­clet of metal hung around in way and gave us some­thing new. Proenza Schouler did an mod­ern, highly-textured cuff that I might have mis­taken for some­thing Jacobs did a few season’s past. It worked well with their hard-core outdoors-girl state­ments. Rag & Bone made us see the androg­y­nous stick­pin anew. Ah, a pin…yes, a stick­pin! (please see my book for a photo of fab­u­lous Hat­tie Carnegie examples).

Oscar de la Renta Spring 2010

Vera Wang Spring 2010

Then there were the orna­men­tal­ists. Gor­geous is as gor­geous does at Oscar de la Renta where lux is the only lan­guage spo­ken. Vera Wang’s fond­ness for beau­ti­ful jew­elry was clearly in evi­dence on her Spring 2010 run­way — it seems as though she puts as much into her bejew­eled acces­sories as she does the clothes. The cob­web neck­lace she showed on her mod­els appeared as much a cel­e­bra­tion of her clev­er­ness as arach­nid sar­to­r­ial deft­ness sans a nee­dle and thread; it isn’t quite clear as to who to con­grat­u­late first.

Naeem Khan Spring 2010

Those who tossed, webbed, lay­ered and oth­er­wise care­lessly (or so it seemed) clashed neck­laces together, like Naeem Khan and Michelle Smith at Milly, entan­gled us in their artis­tic sen­ti­ments. Pair­ing dis­sim­i­lar neck­laces with aban­don can some­times prove bril­liant — some­times not. It’s all in the mix, but it would be wise to remem­ber that this kind of pot luck does require a smile from the fash­ion gods so emu­late with a care­ful eye.

Donna Karan Spring 2010

Marc By Marc Jacobs Spring 2010

I recall both of my dear grand­moth­ers wear­ing their sum­mer jew­elry which con­sisted of white enamel chains, ear­rings, rings, and bracelets. It was the kind of beach-club bling that dialed-up your tan and hope­fully dis­tracted from the mis­shapen and fray­ing straw hat perched atop your swept-up do. Con­tem­po­rary gran-glamour returns in the form of great white chains at Donna Karan and gumball-drops-on-black-leather-cord at Lit­tle Marc, which the lat­ter con­trasted skill­fully with a red and black plaid. The strike of blind­ing white at the neck was a lit­tle like the soul-satisfying good­ies from grandma’s picnic-basket. You just wanted to bask in the sun­light of the famil­iar, eat, and enjoy the moment.

Tues­day: The Emmy’s and Lon­don Fash­ion Week (so far)