One of my current work projects is a book on Traditional Jewellery. 'Traditional Jewellery' is a bit of a dry term - it's what you might think of as folk jewellery but it was worn by people of all different classes; it's basically jewellery that was intended to be worn with traditional or national costumes. This kind of jewellery was massively popular in England in the nineteenth century - probably because we had no national costume of our own - and so was also collected by the V&A in that period.
The material is really diverse and utterly fascinating. My favourite pieces, however, are the massive Italian earrings. The piece of beautiful bling above, for example, from the V&A's collection, measures 8.6cm. Which is bringing me slowly around to the Dolce & Gabbana image at the top of this post, and the one that appears below.
From the V&A's collection, this gold earring from Naples measures 12.8cm.
Here's some more traditional style jewellery in the Dolce & Gabanna adverts, shown with the late twentieth century/early twenty-first century traditional statement handbag.
Seriously though, I love their interpretation of the jewellery. Like the best bits of D&G, it plays with their Italian heritage and makes it look so god damn sexy.
But that's not all. Their whole Autumn/Winter collection is an opulent Italian delight: gold earrings, headpieces and ornate embroidery.
Mila Kunis smoulders in this dress in the current issue of Elle. Close-up, you get to see those roses are a beautiful cross-stitch design - to be honest I never thought cross stitch could make it on the catwalk in a non-ironic way, but it looks completely beautiful.
Traditional craftmanship made to look not only totally relevant but also totally ravishing too - what more could you ask for?
(Except to look like Mila Kunis in that dress.)
No comments:
Post a Comment