Fashion Clothes Trend

Unless you have been in a coma or a Trappist retreat, you will have noticed that Mick Jagger’s daughter has got a job working at a jewellery shop. Ms Jagger is now design director of the revamped and relaunched crown jeweller Garrard.

Apart from looking after the Queen’s baubles and enjoying a reputation as one of the last great silversmiths, Garrard has not really had an awful lot going for it of late – so little,tiffany key rings, in fact, that it was gobbled up by Asprey. But recently, publicity for the company has been remarkable, including an enthusiastic paean across several pages in Vogue. Once all the brouhaha has died down, it will be interesting to see how the place fares, particularly as it is no longer on Bond Street, but Albermarle Street.

Certainly, there was good footfall through the new store in the days following its opening party, as guests trooped in to insert metal tokens they had been given into the Garrard Charm Machine. Insert your token – nominal value GBP100 – twist the handle and a plastic ball containing a charm comes whizzing out. Whether this sort of lucky dip will catch on has to be seen, but if someone else is paying,tiffany, it can be fun. It also functions as a welcome indicator that the charm bracelet might be poised to make a comeback.

The charm bracelet would seem to be at the forefront of Garrard’s assault on the jewellery-buying public. As well as the relatively inexpensive GBP100 lucky dip, there is a more seriously priced Garrard Collection called Knightrider, which features numerous charms based on an armorial theme and modelled with lashings of homo- eroticism by a smouldering Rupert Everett.

All of which is something of a leap from the dowdy and slightly prim image with which the charm bracelet has become encumbered.

From the early part of the 20th century a charm bracelet has been a traditional gift to a child: a relative giving a bracelet and then adding charms to it over the course of subsequent birthdays, religious festivals and so on. It is an intensely personal piece of jewellery and, as head of jewellery at Christie’s south Kensington David Lancaster explains, as pieces of "very personal jewellery they have great significance to the person who gathers them in,tiffany Pendants, and very little to anyone else", although Garrard is hoping to make the charm bracelet a fashion statement as well as a personal one.

On a slightly more sombre note, Lancaster points out that charms are related to memento mori pieces that were popular in the 1800s. "As people died, they bequeathed you a ring with the words ‘remember me’ or ‘in memory of’ either engraved or enamelled on it." And, given 19th century mortality rates, those who remained alive could assemble quite a number of these pieces, which were then worn on a chain.

As well as a reminder of mortality, the charm bracelet has its roots deep in the quasi-mystical field of the good luck amulet, as in an ‘evil eye’ to attract good luck. In The Golden Bough,tiffany earrings, Sir James George Frazer recounts a traditional Middle Eastern cure involving a knotted camel hair bracelet. "The enchanter takes some camel hair and spins it into stout thread, droning a spell the while. Next he ties seven knots on the thread, blowing on each knot before he pulls it tight. This knotted thread is then worn as a bracelet on his wrist by the patient. Every day one of the knots is untied and blown upon, and when the seventh knot is undone the whole thread is rolled up into a ball and thrown into a river, bearing away (as they imagine) the fever with it."

The Golden Bough was published in 1922, at a time when charm bracelet mania had seized Europe. A French picture postcard dating from this period helpfully delineates the more popular types of charm at the time: an elephant symbolising happiness, a heart for love, a four-leaf clover for luck, a die (for luck at the gaming tables), a pig betokening prosperity and so on.

As people’s horizons broadened, so charm bracelets evolved to reflect this, even becoming part of consumer advertising. At the New York World Fair of 1939, the Heinz Pavilion was the locus classicus of a charm bracelet decorated with a number of the company’s tinned goods reproduced in miniature, including small cans of soup,tiffany rings, tomato juice, baked beans and macaroni.

Nor has the charm bracelet escaped the attentions of political spin-doctors. A bracelet of Spanish origin is decorated with a series of letters that spell the legend ‘Viva Franco’. At the other end of the political spectrum, veteran US women’s rights campaigner Alice Paul, who first proposed the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s and found herself campaigning for it again in the 70s, wore a charm bracelet decorated with representations of the states that ratified the amendment.

The high point in the charm bracelet’s popularity came in the years after the war, when such fashion icons as Slim Keith, Babe Paley and of course Diana Vreeland were photographed with wrists well-covered in all manner of elegantly cluttered jewellery. Then, as more people took holidays abroad, landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower found their way on to well-travelled wrists, much as ancient seals had found their way onto the fobs of gentlemen making the grand tour the century before. However, ubiquity and mass production led to a lull in the chic of the charm, especially when less busy bracelet designs of the likes of Elsa Peretti became popular.

Over the past few years charms have returned to being primarily personal pieces of jewellery, once again made expressly for certain customers or reflecting the character of the jeweller selling them. Keen horticulturalist Pilar Boxford, ambassadress of Cartier in Britain, wears a gardening-themed bracelet with small secateurs, a pygmy watering can, a lilliputian trowel and so on. Cartier also sells ready-to-wear charms in the form of diamond-set animals or miniature versions of Cartier classics such as the love bangle

JEWEL IDENTITY

Cartier, 175-176 New Bond Street, London W1 (0171-408 5700), 725 Fifth Avenue; New York (+1 212 308 0843); www.cartier.com

Christie’s, in the UK: 8 King Street Street, London SW1 (+44 20 7839 9060); in the US: 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York (+1 212-636 2000); www.christies.com

Garrard, 24 Albemarle Street, London W1 (+44 20 7758 8520).

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