Adorning Fashion

Costume jewellery is commonly understood to mean fashionable yet affordable adornments made from non-precious material. Originating in in mid-1700s France with the rise of the bourgeoise, the earliest 'costume jewellery' mimicked fine jewellery styles. Since then, costume jewellery has always been evolving. From Victorian sentimentalism to the mass-produced ornaments available today, costume jewellery has developed into an artform in its own right. An encyclopaedic study of its history is long overdue.

Flush with expert information, identification tips and historical anecdotes, Adorning Fashion explores the development of costume jewellery across the past four centuries. The styles of each era - Victorian, Edwardian, Arts & Crafts, Jugenstil, Art Nouveau, and each decade of the twentieth century - are given individual attention. Production methods are also explained in depth. Alloys and gilded electroplating can mimic silver and gold, while the refraction index of treated glass can, to the untrained eye, be mistaken for diamond.

Adorning Fashion discusses the contributions of a remarkable roster of designers and innovators, including Kokichi Mikimoto, Arthur L. Liberty, Carlo Giuliano, René Lalique, Elizabeth Bonté, the Castellani brothers, Jean Fouquet, Jean Després, Fulco di Verdura, Jean Schlumberger, Salvador Dalí, Miriam Haskell, Lina Baretti, Countess Cissy Zoltowska, Line Vautrin, Kenneth Jay Lane, Francisco Rebajes, Diane Love, Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels, Paco Rabanne, Yves Saint Laurent, Napier, Haskell, Trifari, Brania, Bulgari, Versace and more.

Book Features:

• Definitive, comprehensive overview of costume jewellery
• Follows the evolution of costume jewellery from bourgeois France to the present day
• Lavishly illustrated reference book - a must-buy for jewellery enthusiasts and fashion historians
• Includes a remarkable range of designers including Lalique, Fouquet, Dior, Balenciaga, Versace and many more

700 colour images

About the Author

Deanna Farneti Cera has been researching and writing on the subject of vintage jewellery for over thirty years. An international expert on European and American fashion jewellery, Deanna was the curator and acting Vice Director at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna from 1975-1980, and has curated the exhibitions Le giolie di Hollywood - American Designers of Fashion Jewellery 1920-1960 (1987) and Jewels of Fantasy (1991). She wrote the book Bijoux (Federico Motta Editore, 2010), which was translated into Costume Jewellery (UK Edition) and Amazing Gems (US Edition). Deanna lives and works in Milan.