Style icons: women who love jewellery

QFour extraordinary stories tell how jewelery can embody desire and emancipation, becoming an icon of style. Like the women who wear it.

Barbara Hutton. Pearls, principles and solitude

It’s difficult to live in balance when you are the richest little girl in America. So Barbara Hutton grew up with that strong sense of loneliness that often afflicts dizzying heiresses. In Women and their Jewels (Ed. Mitchell Beazley), David Lelait-Helo explains how Barbara used to distribute toys (first) and jewels (later) among her friends just to see them stay with her. Rare pearl of beauty and wealth, the poor little rich girl of America (“poor rich girl”, nickname given to her by the press) He really became passionate about pearls: especially when the father bought them from Cartier a necklace that, it was said, had belonged to Marie Antoinette.

From that moment on, pearls became his signature: the jade ones that formed the necklace given to her by her father for her marriage to the Georgian prince Alexis Mdivani are famous. It was bought back by Cartier at a Sotheby’s auction, for the record price of over $27 million. The regal Mdivani was followed by six other husbands: from Prince Igor Troubetzkoy to Cary Grant, up to the legendary Porfirio Rubirosa. But even more prolific was his jewelry collection.

Any examples? A spectacular set of rubies and diamonds made by Chaumet in 1897which Barbara wore in the 1930s. He purchased a superb 40-carat diamond from Bulgari which, in the 19th century, had belonged to the Egyptian politician Ibrahim Pasha, while Van Cleef & Arpels, in 1967, created for her a tiara with a central diamond of over 50 carats. Just some of the magical jewels that were sold when Barbara disappeared in 1979, almost destitute, consumed by drugs and princely dreams.

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. The collector (also) of bijoux

A Trifari brooch given by a friend in the 1980s: it was the spark that led Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo to explore the world of bijoux. Indeed, of that costume jewelry which, in America, after the Great Depression became the main accessory of every dress. From that moment, the creator of the Turin Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation collected around a thousand pieces. Testimonies of an era in which American jewelery asserted itself with the power of creative invention. That democratic ornament, capable of ennobling simple materials, was the protagonist of a Taschen volume last year which required five years of work to map, through the models of the Sandretto collection, the evolution and protagonists of designer bijoux.

The charm of these jewels shone first of all in emancipation: it was in fact the first type of jewelery that women began to give to themselves. In her clothes (often created ad hoc to enhance extraordinary jewellery) Patrizia always displays one of her “treasures”. Among the most beloved designers stands out William de Lillo, who emigrated from Antwerp to America in the 1950s: his necklaces stood out for the use of metals, color and large proportions, perfect for more informal outfits. Also passionate about lucite (obtained from materials used for airplanes) the Sandretto collection boasts an incredible selection of “jelly bellies” jewels made of this translucent material. Because even in jewelry you never stop discovering: «I love finding pieces that demonstrate how innovative jewelry design has always been: using even humble materials such as plexiglass, raffia and bakelite».

Iris Apfel. The queen of maximalism

He achieved full stardom in 2005, when the MET Museum in New York organized the exhibition Rare Avis dedicated to her eccentric style: bijoux and accessories, to which 300 items of clothing were added. As Iris Apfel became an icon “by chance” after turning eightywhen she still loved to define herself as “the oldest teenager in the world”.

After a career as a journalist, she worked as an interior designer and then founded, with her husband Carl, a textile company specializing in the reproduction of antique fabrics (also desired by the White House). Haute couture arrived later, in Paris. «I put together a collection of haute couture from the 1950s… I went around the ateliers to buy remnants. So I discovered fashion houses that used mannequins with measurements similar to mine” Iris used to say He also began collecting vintage jewelry and bijoux.

After discovering that Apfel owned one of the best costume jewelery collections in the United StatesHarold Koda (at the time curator of the MET Museum) asked her to create an exhibition starting from her original accessories: it was never their cost that fascinated her, but their personality. Objects that won over the public last year at auction Christie’s Unapologetically Iris: The Collection of Iris Apfeldedicated to over 200 works of art, fashion and accessories belonging to the creative eclectic. «I have a really strange jewelry collection: it ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous» she said in 2015 in an American interview for Vanity Fair. «I have very important and valuable things and also some junk, I like to mix them all together. I buy jewelry all the time: I love it! I could be an octopus with ten heads and I still wouldn’t be able to wear them all.”

Ava Gardner. The Hollywood Cat

«Either I write the book, or I sell the jewels. And I’m quite fond of my jewelry». To the journalist Peter Evans, chosen by Ava Gardner in 1988 as a ghostwriter for her biography, the message was immediately clear. The actress, who had suffered two strokes a few years earlier, had to somehow find the money to cover her expenses. The woman who, thirty years earlier, had been defined as “the most beautiful animal in Hollywood” due to her overwhelming feline attractiveness she had always known how to underline her hypnotic cat eyes: with the green of jades and emeralds.

It is no coincidence that it stood out among the most extraordinary pieces in his collection a ring with a Colombian emerald weighing over 7 carats. After purchasing the stone in Los Angeles, in 1961 Ava had it framed with diamonds arranged like flower petals. Van Cleef & Arpels: maison where the actress acquired most of her jewels, proud to have chosen and bought almost all of them personally.

Kashmir sapphires owe their fame to a blue so soft and deep that it is often compared to velvet. Such a voluptuous shade could only win over Gardner. It is said that a famous ring with a sapphire weighing more than 8 carats was offered to her by the well-known aviator, director and film producer Howard Hughes, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship for almost twenty years, without ever accepting marriage proposals. Speaking of wedding: if with diamonds, since she was a girl, she could boast some experience, it was because Mickey Rooney (one of MGM’s biggest stars at the time), sHer first husband offered her an engagement ring with a 6-carat diamond. She returned it to him after a short time so that, it is said, he could pay his bookies.

In 1989, now ill, Gardner auctioned off some jewelry at Sotheby’s in New York. After his passing the following year, the rest of the collection was presented at Sotheby’s in London, including the spectacular emerald ring: resold in 2024 for $384,000.