The whole piece, as published in the November edition of The Gloss Magazine... Jewelry The first piece of jewelry I remember receiving was a gift from my Iraqi grandmother, brought over on her first and only visit from the Middle East, a gold filigree bangle studded with freshwater seed pearls, small and translucent as milk teeth, wrapped in a scrap of cloth. The fiddly clasp worked like a gate latch – you had to slip a tiny rod into a channel and then turn it to secure it. My chubby fingers weren’t deft enough, so Nana helped me. I felt compelled to give her something in return for such a precious thing; she took the pink box of Mr. Bubble bubble bath I proffered, graciously scooped out a handful and ate it. Since then, I’ve worn name plates, rhinestones, mood rings, cuffs, chokers, ID bracelets, ankle bracelets, charm bracelets, bakelite brooches, chunky amber pendants, vintage marcasite, a thin silver toe ring, knuckle dusters, whopping cocktail rings, huge hoop earrings, skulls and crosses on every digit and a bib of mixed metal chain, layered so heavily that, had I actually been aboard the listing superyacht of my fabulous imaginary life quaffing champagne, I would’ve fallen overboard, yanked by the yoke to a watery end, but not before I’d rifled through the heaving treasure chest of glistering booty winking at me from the ocean floor. Hello, my name is Susie, and I’m an Accessory Addict. Bling is my thing; I’m never too bloated to don a tiara, and not in a million years would my bum look big in a juicy, pear-shaped diamond ring. Glitz gives me pleasure, whether it’s jumble sale juju or an investment piece I’ve skipped a few dinners to acquire. You’d swear I was minted, but Paste has become so sophisticated you can hardly tell the difference between costume and fine jewelry. Besides, anyone who asks if your gear is real is missing the point. Jewelry is an intensely personal expression of who we are, what tribe we belong to, and the value we place on ourselves. Are you really worth one to three months of his salary, the engagement ring industry’s suggested standard spend? All you single ladies, I can’t help thinking that if she liked it, Beyonce woulda put a ring on it, paying for it out of her own portfolio. Jewelry is as much body armor as it is decoration – consider Lisbeth Salander, kitted out in menacing spikes and prickly piercings, border guards defending that dragon tattoo. Women growing up in the Fifties were told that pearls, the foundation of every gal’s jewelry wardrobe, improved in lustre through contact with skin oils; during the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher’s pearl necklace took on a more sinister lustre, metamorphosing into a string of hand-knotted live rounds. I may have never thrown a punch, but when I’m feeling vulnerable, a fistful of rings makes me feel like Katie Taylor. After uni, my party of friends and I combined waiting tables with auditions, rehearsing and gigging our underground band, while developing a line of jewelry called Worldwear. One day, on foot in Manhattan, humping the collection from store to store in 1950’s train cases we’d found in thrift shops, my colleague and I were snapped by the now famous bicycle-riding street photographer Bill Cunningham. The New York Times style section headline? “Boxy bags filled with memories”. I still have the Worldwear necklace I was wearing that day, multiple laminated color photocopies of Warhol icons, playing card sized, dangling from hardware store chain. A woman meets a man, a promising hunk of raw material she secretly believes will change, transmogrifying from rough prototype to polished product; he never does. A man meets a woman, mystifying and marvelous, expecting her to never change, yet she does. It’s like that with jewelry: I swore I’d never be parted from my crimson thread Kabbalah bracelet, until it came off in the shower. I’d made a fierce commitment to my belly ring that included life-long sit-ups, but my tummy rejected it. My Eternity ring languishes on a velvet pillow, though I’ve been married forever. It’s not them, it’s me. I’ve changed, from Girlchild to Rockchick to Chic chick to Countrygal Couldn’t-Give-A-Damn to…Goddess. Lately, I’m all about what bloggers in-the-know deem ‘advanced style’. Advanced style comes with age, with being perfectly comfortable in one’s own, sometimes saggy skin, and the confidence to embrace and even celebrate the choices we’ve made. You don’t need to be old to recognize advanced style, or even to aspire to it. Think Iris Apfel, a 92 year-old New York born and bred ‘rara avis’, or rare bird: designer, decorator, lecturer, style icon. Her dash and dazzle have been celebrated, filmed and often imitated, but what inspires is her ability to surround herself with what delights her and the ease with which she navigates her world. Like an ancient mariner, Iris searched the Seven Seas (and flea markets) for the ethnic bangles stacked up her arms, Byzantine necklaces layered one over the other, collar to thigh, a scattering of rhinestone brooches and nugget rings in turquoise and coral punctuating her expressive hands. When thieves broke into our place, it wasn’t my passport or cash or boxed sets of Alien that I missed most. It was the sparkly gobstopper panther’s head ring that I’d found in a boutique in Rome for less than twenty euro. I’d worn it on my pointer finger, and it seemed to point to who I was for a time. I trawled the web without success, and although I still feel an intermittent pang of longing for it, I’ve changed. Currently, I wear a Stephen Webster rhodium and diamond thorn ring on my wedding finger, and a black ceramic watch with a crystal face. It’s hard to tell the time, but I find I’m usually where I need to be, at exactly the right moment.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 13:59:19 +0000
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