Pearls before millennials: how designers are turning traditional adornment into hip must-have
Forget the styles of Audrey Hepburn or Jackie Kennedy, pearls are being repurposed for a daring new generation by designers who are attaching them to everything from biker boots to headbands
Pearls have a reputation for being conservative, traditional and mumsy, but today’s designers have decided the time is right to stamp all over that and toughen up the pearl’s image. Their vision: for all the coolest girls to be wearing these silky smooth, wonderfully white adornments by this autumn.
When food meets fashion and the fetishes that go beyond a bit of sauce
Over recent decades, a necklace of fine white cultured pearls has signified a right of passage into womanhood for generations of well-brought-up young ladies, whether they be the British “girls in pearls” featured in upper-class British magazine Country Life or demure Japanese brides wearing their first Mikimoto Akoya necklace.
But pearls have long held men and women in their thrall, whether as symbols of virginity or trophies of excess. They have become associated with iconic women from Cleopatra and Elizabeth I to Coco Chanel, Barbara Hutton and Jackie Onassis.
In a spectacular gesture of irreverence, Queen Cleopatra famously sacrificed one of her spectacularly large pearl earrings by melting it in a goblet of wine vinegar and drinking it down in front of Mark Antony, to demonstrate the might and wealth of Egypt as a political gesture to the Roman Empire.
That same sense of irreverence is seemingly spurring designers today. Designers are making the most of the smooth, lustrous appeal of pearls and its associations of purity and then mockingly fixing them to biker boots, headbands and everything in between.