Revival of the Ritzy: MIRIAM HASKELL's Costume Jewellery

Turning 40 is a huge, humbling (and at times horrifying) milestone in any persons's life - man or women. One thing it does make you do is take a hard, cold look, physically at your face for tell-tale signs of ageing (and you do discover a few around the eyes or forehead you swear were not there the night before) and emotionally at your life's has been priorities so far and make a few minor adjustments.

Because if you are anything like me, you have been living trying to make the people around you happy. I decided on the day I turned forty (and that was six years back) that this decade was going to be about me - not my husband or children and the million little things I have been obliged to do to make their days run smoothly. I for once, will do what I can to make my life easier, and have time to do what I have always wanted to do, namely - learn, read, write and be more involved with design and things that interest and inspire me. I will have the time to visit my mum more frequently and spend time with her, I will make time for my friendships which may or may not tally with couple friendships I had been obliged to carry out as a sane, sociable married couple.

And how has  my 40s resolution impacted my family life, well, my kids seem to view me more as a person now than a mom who is always there to pick up their crap (so to speak, and when I do pick up their crap on the  occasional, they are actually grateful, some thing that never happened before!) and my husband has appreciated me being more happy and calmer (instead of tired and crappy from running around doing errands every day) - a good change all around, I must say. I only wish I had done this sooner, but I guess, you can only make these adjustments when your kids are a certain age ready to be pushed into being more independent and mine were certainly that age when I reached my fortieth.

On my fortieth, I also made a pact with myself to treat myself to a lovely piece of vintage jewelry for each passing birthday (another one of my passions that had been lying dormant for a long time). Now six years on, I am a proud collector of  some lovely vintage pieces of portrait/costume jewelry that gives me huge pleasure every time I wear them and have been complemented on many occasions by friends and strangers alike.

One jewelry designer that I have become a huge admirer of and actively look out for her for-sale pieces on the net (and they seem to be getting rarer and pricier with each passing year) is MIRIAM HASKELL - a name unknown to me before I started collecting. The more I know about her the more she fascinates me, not only because of her humble beginnings, startling success as a jewelry designer, and a tragic decline into obscurity and death, but also because her jewelry resonates with my ideas about design - that it should be unique (she never replicated any of her designed jewelry and each piece was handmade), should have finesse (the detailing on her jewelry is amazing), and should bring joy (her jewelry certainly does that, she took inspiration from all things around in nature). And to top it all her jewelry is not pretentious, you don't need to save it for special occasions, you can wear it with your jeans and look real classy or jazz up a plain evening dress and look real glamorous.

Miraim Haskell - a 1930s portrait

Miriam's story is compelling, she was born in Indiana in 1899 and moved to New York and opened a boutique shop in McAlpine Hotel in 1926 when costume jewelry was still fairly an unknown and new concept introduced by the wildly popular Coco Channel in Paris who had launched her vrais bijoux en toc or real fake jewellery in 1924. It can be said without the shadow of a doubt that Miriam was the one who introduced Americans to the joys of owning fine pieces of costume jewelry in the last century.

They say necessity fuels innovation and it was the years following the Great Depression in the 1930s that saw a boom in the popularity of costume jewelry in America - an alternative to real jewelry which women could indulge in without guilt and men could gift without digging deep into their  pockets. 

And Miriam was the only costume jeweler this side of the Atlantic that was making pieces at par in design, workmanship and artistic flavor with the ones across in the fashion capital Paris. Movie stars patronage in the 40s and 50s gave further boost to Miriam's sales and increased her popularity - these were the years when she designed some of her most iconic pieces. But like any true artist, she was eccentric by nature and given to bouts of depression which grew longer and worse as the years went by till she could no longer work by late 1950s. She died a lonely death in relative obscurity in 1981, aged 82.

Only recently and after nearly half a century, her jewelry has seen a revival like none another and her designed pieces are changing hands for higher and higher amounts and is becoming rarer and most sought after.

The first vintage jewelry piece I bought designed by Miriam Haskell was on my fortieth - a double strand of pearls with matching clips - they are faux pearls but so subtly luminous that they look and feel real and rich - very glamorous, very ritzy. Since then I have acquired a few more of her vintage pieces and am forever on the look out for more!

Here are some of her vintage jewelry for you to admire