Milan was dark, sexy, earthy, mod­ern, and illu­mi­nat­ing. Armani showed Bauhaus col­ors and spare, mod­ern trin­kets to match. Dolce & Gab­bana looked to the baroque reli­gious tra­di­tions of Sicily. Both beau­ti­ful shows fea­tur­ing jew­elry that under­scored respec­tive themes, rather than adorned for adornment’s sake. The mes­sage was in the details. See you in Paris…

I can’t believe JEWELHISTORY.COM is almost five years old! March 1^st marks this mile­stone. This blog began as a labor of love, a way to talk about jew­elry that didn’t exist on the net — or any­where else. I’ve seen my thoughts reprinted and bor­rowed through­out the years and all I can say is a […]

Last night’s pre­sen­ta­tion by Billy Crys­tal was spot on. Why they play with this for­mula from year to year is a mys­tery to me. Just make him the host of the Acad­emy Awards for life, or as long as he wants the gig, and I’ll tune in. Gold was a favorite dress color, which I […]

With the red car­pet rolling out tonight for the Acad­emy Awards, I’m not quite sure what to antic­i­pate in terms of jew­elry. Thus far, it’s been a sea­son of under­stated, taste­ful lux­ury. Which is lovely if you are doing din­ner the­ater and drinks, but for this evening’s Oscar pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m hop­ing we see some star-quality […]

Suzanne Belper­ron by Sylive Raulet and Olivier Baroin is a much wel­comed book about one of the most elu­sive yet cel­e­brated jew­elry design­ers in cul­tural his­tory. Madame Belper­ron, a female amidst a pha­lanx of highly-touted male jew­elry mak­ers, began work­ing for Ger­maine Boivin, and in 1932, was hired by Bernard Herz, a well-known gem­stone and […]

Tem­per­ley London’s theme was inspired by the deca­dence of reli­gious paint­ings and tapes­tries from the Renais­sance. It was all very gold and gor­geous. Jew­elry was styled in breezy del­i­cate lay­ers rather than courtly and orches­trated. Loved the insou­ciant atti­tude of the col­lec­tion, and its styling. Meenal Mis­try reviewed the show for Style.com and said, “…But […]

No one could have offered a Down­ton Abbey moment bet­ter than Ralph Lau­ren. Yet another ref­er­ence to the Duchess of Wind­sor: see the image below of the model with her dark hair teth­ered to the head and gob­stop­per gems around her neck. She is quickly becom­ing a car­i­ca­ture of wealth and priv­i­lege rather than an […]

Jew­elry for this New York Fash­ion Week was there, and not. Oscar de la Renta cre­ated a bodice ornament/necklace and took the theme to the tex­tile of his clothes — and to great effect. The jewel was either blown up to life-sized pro­por­tions or shrunken down and trans­lated into a small, foulard-type print. There was […]

We are mid­way through NYFW Fall 2012 and there isn’t a lot being said about bling. In fact, if the mod­els weren’t swathed in wool, faux fur, and leather, I’d almost mis­take these run­ways for spring, where often the main or only orna­ments are a bracelet and/or ear­rings. The most per­sonal state­ments about jew­elry were […]

Red, black, and cutie-pie shots of car­toon color are up next for fall’s new palette. Thus far, the sea­son seems not ter­ri­bly tra­di­tional jewelry-wise. It feels ran­dom, like strolling down the side streets of down­town Man­hat­tan where one finds dis­tinct view­points in the shop win­dows. The long, shoul­der dust­ing ear­ring, worn singly at Jen Kao […]