With all the celebri­ties design­ing jew­elry, it’s eas­ier to list those who haven’t thrown their name in the hat that those who have. Among the glit­terati design­ing the glit­ter are: Ali­cia Keyes for The Barber’s Daugh­ter, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt for Asprey, Nicole Richie for Bebe, and Sharon Stone for Dimi­ani. Now I did hear rumors men­tion­ing a Bebe/Lindsay Lohan col­lao­ra­tion, which is sur­pris­ing after the harshly received Ungaro show, but hey, I guess even bad press passes for good news in mar­ket­ing these days. As Shake­speare had Juliet declare,

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Or would it? Many com­mer­cial endeav­ors, either the big box stores, home shop­ping chan­nels, or houses who cater to the impetu­ous con­sumer, are offer­ing pretty stinky stuff. Trendy bells and whis­tles done on the cheap is the old­est retail trick in the book. Don’t always believe what you are view­ing is qual­ity — most of the time, it’s not, ie, inex­pen­sive stones, sloppy crafts­man­ship, etc. I was surf­ing the web­sites of a few high-profile, high-rent, NYC stores with a pro­fu­sion of jew­elry selec­tions that were not only poorly edited but also costly (how many choices in dia­mond hoop and cir­cle motif ear­rings does one woman need?). More­over, when you squint, it all looks the same! Dis­tinc­tion is the bet­ter part of jew­elry design). Low-value gem­stones set into a stratospherically-priced ring, neck­lace, or pair of ear­rings is no bet­ter than decep­tion theft (it used to be called the “old switcheroo”). Big-ticket doo-dads with merely the allu­sion to fine jew­elry will never improve with age. They will remain doo-dads that you may enjoy wear­ing –which is absolutely fine — I just wouldn’t want to see any­one blow their hol­i­day bonus on them. Shop around a lit­tle, then make your deci­sion. The dol­lars you save may serve you bet­ter, eco­nomic down­turn or not.

Why has there has yet to be a jew­elry col­lab­o­ra­tion that has reached a Kate Moss/Topshop level of suc­cess? Because in order for a jew­elry col­lec­tion to achieve that kind of sta­tus, it has to be both acces­si­ble and offer some­thing unique to the mar­ket. Oth­er­wise, it all begins to blend into the land­scape. If we are speak­ing strictly about suc­cess­ful, high-profile designer-ships, I would sug­gest that DVF for H Stern has sev­eral great con­cepts that are emi­nently wear­able and can be worn singly or with other pieces from the col­lec­tion. With­out over embell­ish­ing, DVF seems to under­stand the need for impor­tant, every­day jewelry.

Jump­ing into jew­elry design, by those famous, and/or hope­fully, inspired, can be influ­en­tial, even phil­an­thropic. Both Jolie’s and Stone’s col­lab­o­ra­tions will ben­e­fit those in need. Buy­ing from either of these col­lec­tions not only high­lights these wor­thy causes, it helps to jus­tify (at least in part) the cost of the pur­chase. Is there evi­dence, though, that peo­ple are then all the more moti­vated to buy these pieces? The response is an opti­mistic one, how­ever, the answer doesn’t speak directly to the tal­ents of the designer, does it? For the sale of jew­elry, where a por­tion of the pro­ceeds ben­e­fit, as Eleanor Roo­sevelt put it, “Those less for­tu­nate than our­selves,” this doesn’t mat­ter. Oth­er­wise, I’m afraid it does.