So the mys­tery of my absence from the blog last week may now be solved: I was work­ing on an exclu­sive story for Elle.com’s new chan­nel. The launch will take place this week and when my story goes live, I’ll post a link. I had the oppor­tu­nity to work with Exec­u­tive Acces­sories Edi­tor, Kate Davidson […]

Chanel cou­ture Fall 2010

The JCrew/Miriam Haskell col­lab­o­ra­tion has already been touted much and loud by blog­gers and main­stream web sources. J.Crew’s new stand-alone bridal store in NYC is the place to find these made-to-order pieces. They are, admit­tedly, won­der­fully spec­tac­u­lar and seem to pos­sess every vin­tage nuance that Haskell did so well. The col­lec­tion itself is spe­cial.
HOWEVER. There […]

I spent the last three days in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., our nation’s cap­i­tal, with my fam­ily. We vis­ited The Smithsonian’s Gem Hall. It’s a pil­grim­age I make every time I’m in the city. As per usual, the lines were long and crowded, two deep, to view Marie Antoinette’s dia­monds as well as the neck­lace Napoleon gave […]

Gold is beau­ti­ful, yes, and you can even eat small foil-like bits of it on (very expen­sive) desserts. But can it make you beau­ti­ful? An arti­cle in The New York Times reflects on whether or not gold’s lus­tre is acces­si­ble to those who would pay the price…

here.

Worth Ball Gown circa 1898

…where were the jew­els? Were they not a part of the eman­ci­pa­tion of the fairer sex in this coun­try? Of course they were, how­ever Amer­i­can Woman: Fash­ion­ing a National Iden­tity (The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art, May 5 — August 15, 2010) is about ladies loos­en­ing up (their but­tons, babe), let­ting go (of […]

These are the orig­i­nal cuffs owned and worn by Coco Chanel that have been fea­tured in so many his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs. They were cre­ated by Fulco Ver­dura who first worked for Chanel as her tex­tile designer. Inspired by his inven­tive twists on tra­di­tion, she later asked him to re-design the ances­tral jew­elry that had been given […]

I’d like to intro­duce a new cat­e­gory of posts enti­tled Work­ing Girl Col­lectible. They reflect not just the eco­nomic cli­mate we are liv­ing in, but will also offer smart, real­is­tic options for col­lect­ing jew­elry that has a sense of value — the types of pieces that will retain their artis­tic integrity, and hope­fully in the […]

*Flow­ers seem intended for the solace of ordi­nary human­ity.  ~John Ruskin
*With daf­fodils mad foot­notes for the spring,
And asters pur­ple aster­isks for autumn -
~Con­rad Aiken, Pre­ludes for Mem­non, 1930
*I’d rather have roses on my table than dia­monds on my neck.  ~Emma Gold­man
Ah-hem…Ms. Gold­man, let’s not rush to judg­ment, shall we?. What if those dia­monds were the stigma, […]