LUST FOR LUSTRE
The fall season finds a renewed fascination with pearls in fine jewellery and fashion
in the new alaïa exhibition at Musée galliera in paris, a dress is made of pearl-embroidered raffia, an innovation that takes christian dior’s 1952 “palmyra” gown and its pearl ornamentation in an edgier contemporary direction. Fashion’s love affair with pearls goes back centuries — even the mosaics at San Vitale in ravenna depict Justinian and the empress Theodora dripping in headpieces of pearls; later, Queen Victoria favoured the gems, dotting them in her hairline and décolleté. That lust for lustre is back, from the dramatic historical jewellery and natural specimens on view in the pearls exhibition at the Victoria & albert to the demure, like the Johannes Vermeer masterpiece Girl with a Pearl Earring, arriving at the Frick collection in New york on loan from The hague later this month.
We can also thank daisy buchanan’s ropes of pearls and thoroughly modern hand-pieces in The Great Gatsby for the revival, now part of Tiffany & co’s Ziegfeld collection. There — or at Maison birks, with a nod to centuries-old settings — the trend thankfully skips nacre’s more mumsy and debutante mid-century associations (a prim short strand or three, à la Jackie kennedy) and goes for the bold, often with gold. in 1912, designer Jeanne Lanvin popularized tassel belts, ornate twisted cords worn over her afternoon tunique dresses. This fall, Lanvin creative director alber elbaz offers a necklace in that style, an homage festooned with ropes of costume pearls. Tom binns incorporates them among necklaces of gilded safety pins; with armani privé, they’re held in the hand with encrusted clothes, and at alexander McQueen, they adorn cage headpieces and gloves. you might say the fashion world is their oyster.