No! not Gainsborough’s.

Gucci’s.

Times have changed, as amply pointed out by the front page article in this morning’s New York Times Style section, “The Ornamental Male” (by Guy Trebay).   Ornamental indeed!

However, before I saw the boy I saw the blue item at his neck and wondered if it were a beadcrocheted necklace – it looked almost like one of mine at first  http://www.msturman.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=147&zenid=2e2b2e89c8235a88763c0082269de071 . Then I took in the whole image! Wow! this beautiful creature was a guy with a blue bandana knotted at his neck! The whole outfit is blue and the guy is too gorgeous.

I turned pages to peruse the remainder of the article, looking to see if there were other neck ornamentation on these very ornamental boys. Maybe a chain or two. Hmmm. These fellas are so gorgeous they put many of us women to shame — the sculpted cheeks, the defined bone structure!

So, what about beaded jewelry for guys? Why not — especially when they’re so gorgeous?

This morning over coffee I lingered over the Fashion page in the New York Times, “The Big New Idea Is Modesty” by Cathy Horyn.  I don’t know about “modesty” – the root that word is “mode”  and I was taken by the gorgeous Marchesa dress, a “column of bugle beads” and especially the Anna Sui “wool shift with an embroidered bib neckline”.  Those trends right up my bead alley!

I researched Anna Sui and learned that her collection was inspired by the American Arts and Crafts Movement!  Wow!  I’m all for that.  The accessories shown with her collection were large and chunky, “amazing handcrafted necklaces and brooches incorporating actual tiles from Detroit’s Pewabic Pottery, founded in 1903” (http://www.stylelist.com/2010/02/17/anna-sui-fall-2010-fashion-week-runway-review/).

I fixated on the bib neckline of the wool shift pictured in the Times and thought that the bib piece ought to be separate, so it might be worn again.  I make several bib necklaces and woven collars, any of which might compliment a simple dress and be right in style with the upcoming fall trends.

Which bib necklace would you choose to embellish your simple wool dresses?

Last Sunday in the New York Times Magazine, David Colman wrote about pearls in “You Go Pearl!” http://bit.ly/8RxJhX.  Mr. Colman relates a credible, concise history of pearls in fashion beginning with Seneca.  These pearls were natural ones that indeed were prized and precious as there were so few of them to be found.

Pearls are nacreous organic gems formed in the body of a mollusk — a mussel or an oyster.  Natural pearls are those formed without human assistance.  So, due to constant demand, the world’s main pearling grounds were depleted by over-fishing in the late 18^th century.   Experiments in forming cultured pearls, those formed as the result of human intervention in the formation process by either bead or tissue nucleation, began in the 1890s, and by 1920, Mikimoto marketed cultured pearls internationally.

There are two main kinds of pearls:  saltwater and freshwater.  Saltwater pearls are nucleated with a bead and come in three main types:  Akoya pearls from the P. fucata oysters are white, round, lustrous and come from saltwater farms in areas of Japan/China. Tahitian pearls from the P. margaritifera black-lipped oyster, are relatively large and come in lustrous colors, farmed in saltwater farms around French Polynesia/Cook Islands.   South Sea pearls from P. maxima oysters are silver,white, or yellow, and are farmed in the saltwater farms around Australia.

Freshwater pearls are cultured in mussels in freshwater farms around China and Japan and come in various sizes and colors due to the way they are made:  Tissue nucleation, the insertion of a piece of tissue into the freshwater mussel, induces it to form a cultured pearl.  However, because up to 50 tissue pieces of tissue can be implanted in one mussel during the nucleation procedure, freshwater cultured pearls are plentiful and usually come in irregular shapes.

We’ve all seen examples of both types of pearls.  Who wouldn’t want a strand of one of the amazing varieties of saltwater pearls?  They are gorgeous and perfect, and quite expensive — the more perfectly round and lustrous, the more expensive.

If you have seen my work in pearls, you’ll know that I use freshwater pearls, of all sizes and colors.  But the main point here — and the reason I have bored you with a much-condensed review of cultured pearl history/formation — is that the less perfect, the more unusual the shape or markings on pearls, the better I like it.  Take for instance my necklace of  top-drilled, circled (the markings around the pearls), and tailed pearls here.  To me, this is interesting, dynamic jewelry.

Many women throughout the years, as cited by Mr. Colman in his article, are famous for wearing perfect, knotted and tied strands of pearls.  I however do something different with my knotted and tied freshwater pearls, as in my 96″ rope of natural (undyed), graduated size, pearls here.  These can be wrapped around the neck several times or looped in many ways — to me much more interesting than a plain strand, however perfect or expensive.

I particularly love natural (undyed), lustrous freshwater pearls that come formed into interesting shapes, such as Chicken Feet but using dyed freshwater pearls makes for a dynamic necklace too.

Mr. Colman remarks of Marc Jacobs that in his spring dresses the designer festooned them with “buckets of pearls” — a dynamic idea, indeed.  Wouldn’t you rather just wear a necklace of freshwater pearls?

I was stopped dead in my tracks, so to speak, when I came across the article and pictures on the front page of the Times’ Sunday Style section. My roving eye for color and for jewelry fixed on the images of women wearing huge pieces of jewelry. I wished the article contained more information and so was surprised and delighted when I went online and found a narrated video version of it by Bill Cunningham, the Times’ On the Street Photographer, entitled “Fashion Fireworks”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/02/fashion/20090705-street-feature/index.html?ref=fashion# .

The narrative was delightful and there were more pictures in the video then in the newspaper. Cunningham tells about the gigantic fake stone necklaces made of light weight plastic that he found perfect for this holiday, hence “Fashion Fireworks.” The flash of the jewelry complemented the fireworks in the sky and I couldn’t agree more.

Cunningham points out that in the current economic climate women are not buying clothes as they used to but are adding sparkle to what they have with this big jewelry. He further urges women to put on all their jewelry at once, as shown in a few of his photos. His message is that, despite the poor economy, women should nevertheless have fun with dressing, not be inhibited about it and not think such pieces are too much. YES!!

While the pieces I make cannot be completed with old spare jewelry parts while sitting on a beach as Cunningham suggests, I definitely “do” gigantic and sparkle. I’m currently working on a new line of pieces featuring rough stone medallions and more rough cut beads, pearls and colored stones. I’m very excited about them and can’t wait to complete them, have them photographed and put up for sale on www.msturman.com.

So I definitely agree with Cunningham that women should update their wardrobe with jewelry, new or repurposed. How do you have fun with fashion these days?