Lynn Yaeger on the Joy of Obtaining Good Jewels for On your own

The other children had been preserving up for bicycles and roller skates. I experienced some thing else in brain. It was a 14-karat gold heart locket with a small diamond at its center and a body within to hold a photograph of your sweetheart, which in my circumstance was John Lennon. If the proprietress of the jewelry store in Massapequa, New York, was wanting to know what this 12-yr-previous was carrying out in her keep day right after working day, she did not allow on. I saved up my allowance cash, wheedled and begged my softie moms and dads to chip in, and, finally, I bought that sucker for myself.

I nevertheless have it. I realized it when I was in junior superior, and I know it right now: Shopping for jewellery for yourself is one of the most gratifying, joyful, lifetime-affirming ordeals you can have. Who would like to wait all over right up until a passionate husband or wife stumbles into your existence, and why need to this hapless soul be envisioned to know that what you genuinely want is a Brent Neale 3-stone ring or an Arman Sarkisyan chicken bracelet? They may well be the most superb man or woman in the world, but isn’t it also considerably to expect that they comprehend the change among Boucheron and Bulgari, Lalaounis and Lalique?

Lest you persist in the perception that there is anything a little sad about buying high-quality jewelry for you, I would argue just the opposite—there is something miserable about not acquiring factors you really want, that you can manage, for the reason that of some previous-fashioned idea that you are not worthy of marking your very own private milestones with jewellery that is exactly your flavor mainly because, properly, you picked it out. Why is it alright to obtain your dwelling room a stunning chandelier but not all correct to invest the exact same total on a pair of chandelier earrings? Why are you comfy getting a wildly pricey snakeskin purse but queasy when it will come to forking over the major bucks for a Victorian snake ring?

Acquiring baubles is no additional egocentric, no additional heinous than obtaining clothing for oneself. In simple fact, it is significantly far more functional. Jewellery retains its value! Stocks might soar and plummet, but a 1920s Cartier Artwork Deco diamond watch is often well worth at the very least its excess weight in gold, and typically a full good deal a lot more. As well as, can you dress in a financial institution assertion wrapped all over your wrist for a night out on the town?

If just about now you are imagining, This Lynnie is a selfish small toddler, I would like to inform you that I am in truth in exalted corporation. Mae West, a single of the highest-paid out females in The united states in the 1930s, wrote in her autobiography, “With this type of revenue, I in some cases pay myself in jewels.” Marlene Dietrich after took a bunch of her lesser pieces—diamond earrings, diamond necklace, ruby bracelet, some other trifles—to Van Cleef & Arpels and had them blended into the amazing cuff bracelet that became her signature piece. (She can be observed flaunting it in Alfred Hitchcock’s Phase Fright.)

Some collectors hardly ever basically have on their treasures. Immediately after Andy Warhol died, the executors of his estate were being shocked to uncover a stash of amazing jewels, like a Boivin coronary heart bracelet that at the time belonged to Millicent Rogers, hidden involving two submitting cupboards. Warhol clearly assumed a ton about jewelry, after musing, “It would be pretty glamorous to be reincarnated as a huge ring on Elizabeth Taylor’s finger.”

And no significantly less a personage than Marie Antoinette—I could abhor her politics, but I adore her style in jewelry—got into the identical type of issues I now do when she noticed one thing she just experienced to have. It took her 6 decades to pay back off a stunning pair of 3-strand diamond bracelets, and she was admonished by her own mom, who wrote: “The news from Paris tells me that you have just done a acquire of bracelets for 250,000 livres, and to that effect you have unsettled your funds.” (These identical bracelets sold for additional than $8 million at Christie’s a couple months in the past.)

So go in advance, unsettle your funds! Sign up for me this Valentine’s Day in honoring that specific another person who has trapped with you by thick and slender, who has viewed the disasters and the triumphs, and who is additional than worthy of that antique emerald parure you have been eyeing all yr long. Let us jingle the stack of bracelets that just turned up on your credit rating card invoice and celebrate the most deserving man or woman in your daily life: you.

[On top illustration: Arman Sarkisyan earring ($13,750 for pair), bergdorfgoodman.com; Christina Alexiou ring ($6,315), musexmuse.com; Nikos Koulis earring ($12,240 for pair), bergdorfgoodman.com; Anthony Lent Rings ($3,800 each), anthonylent.com; Foundrae bracelet ($1,375), foundrae.com; Buddha Mama bracelet ($7,300), brokenenglishjewelry.com]

This story seems in the February 2022 concern of Town & State.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

This material is produced and maintained by a 3rd celebration, and imported on to this page to enable buyers offer their electronic mail addresses. You may well be ready to uncover much more data about this and very similar information at piano.io