When it comes to statement jewellery, Nita Ambani and her family’s formidable collection of carved emeralds, diamonds and pearls is hard to rival. They wear these jewels with evident pleasure, but not all their peers relish the security detail that accompanies such riches – prompting a renewed appetite for other, less conspicuous ways of making a statement.
Designers have been championing a new strain of statement jewellery: bold and artistic pieces that make an impact without the price tag, because they are costume. These are not imitations, but opulent pieces, designed to be worn – and noticed – for their individuality.
Driving the trend are Schiaparelli’s gleaming gold anatomy pieces; Saint Laurent’s chandelier earrings in pearl, resin and rhinestones; oversized wooden cuffs at Ferragamo; and earrings so long that they graze the rib cage from Valentino, Givenchy and Michael Kors.
The trend will be under the spotlight again this spring when Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art opens next month at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibition brings together Surrealist costume jewellery by Elsa Schiaparelli and collaborators such as Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí, alongside the boldly coloured anatomy pieces by current creative director Daniel Roseberry, produced from body castings.
One notable exception, however, is the black velvet dress with the gold lung necklace worn by Bella Hadid at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 – which was almost certainly not cast from life.
In a 2022 interview with The National, Roseberry said: “Jewellery was the first place where I felt the Surrealist tropes could live in a modern way. The anatomy feels like a code for the house, part of our language.”
Ever restless, the creative director has since pushed his costume jewellery into new territory, most recently with voluminous, illuminated salt-stone necklaces that glowed under the moody lighting of Schiaparelli’s spring/summer 2026 show.
Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel were instrumental in popularising costume jewellery in the 1930s. Chanel, in particular, took a notably relaxed view of value, freely mixing fine jewellery with ropes of faux pearls and historically inspired costume pieces – and in doing so, rewrote the rules of how jewellery could be worn.
As jewellery historian Carol Woolton, co-author of Costume Jewellery – published by Taschen – notes: “Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine how radical it was to make glass and gilt into jewels that could be coveted, and flagrantly mix them with actual precious gems.”
Chanel created magnificent baroque jewels that were low in intrinsic value, but rich in style and bravura. Today, “costume” can suggest the theatrical – even the fanciful – and on the runway, some of the exaggerated fancy jewels are described as showpieces that don’t go into production. Increasingly, however, the opposite is true: the boldest pieces from Saint Laurent and Schiaparelli are making it into boutiques, where they are very much in demand.
Woolton believes the term costume jewellery came from Chanel, “who said jewellery was ‘to complete your costume’: the essence of pulling together a look with costume jewels customising your style”, she explains.
Once, bijou stones – glass and paste replicas – were used simply to imitate precious jewels. These couturiers instead gave costume jewellery its own creative integrity, helping to make it respectable. Collectors now see such pieces not as fashion accessories, “but as a branch of the decorative arts”, says Woolton. “It’s really something that’s valued for its imagination more than it’s worth, and so it’s all about fantasy and style rather than wealth.”
Costume jewellery took firm root in America in the 1920s and 1930s, as Paris-trained craftsmen emigrated to New York after the First World War, bringing fine-jewellery techniques to paste and rhinestones. Freed from the cost constraints of precious materials, their enlarged creations were playful, uplifting, and designed to add flourish to an outfit. During and after the fabric rationing of the Second World War, a single brooch or clip became one of the few ways to express individuality.
Designs ranged from the floral and figurative to the witty – notably the influential New York costume jeweller Trifari and its famed “jelly belly” brooches, which depicted miniature animals with cabochon bellies carved from Lucite. New materials such as plastics, wood and Lucite came into play; the latter – still widely used in fashion today – is an acrylic that was originally developed for aircraft parts during the war.
Another key figure, Woolton notes, was Kenneth Jay Lane, who launched his business in 1962 and was soon dubbed the “king of costume jewellery”. His vibrant and glamorous creations were worn by Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Wallis Simpson, whose Lane pieces later fetched remarkable sums at auction.
“He was well-connected,” Woolton says. “He was able to translate what some of the best-dressed women were wearing in real jewels into his faux jewels and because everyone loved him, everyone wore it.”
Although Lane died in 2017, his vintage-style brooches remain keenly sought after. Among contemporary designers, New Yorker Alexis Bittar stands out for his sculptural, tactile Lucite and metal pieces, while in France, Goossens Paris continues to make bold statements with gilded brass jewellery inspired by antique and Byzantine forms.
Robert Goossens founded his workshop in 1950 and became a close collaborator of Coco Chanel after meeting her in 1954, later working with Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s. He also collaborated with Balenciaga, Dior, Givenchy and Christian Lacroix, whose bold gold brooches dominated the 1990s and early 2000s – and are now highly collectible.
“Even today, we carry the legacy of all these creative exchanges that nourished Robert Goossens’s work,” says a spokesperson for the maison. “We love drawing inspiration from this history, and by exploring his personal archives, we bring to life creations such as the fish motif featured in the latest Lagune collection.”
Fantasy, poetry and nature remain central to the house’s inspiration. “Audacity and creativity always defined our maison. We’ve always worked on jewellery with generous volumes,” the spokesperson adds – with brass allowing the atelier to push scale and create true statement pieces. The result is evident in the spring/summer 2026 Céleste necklace, a double row of large, textured medallions, as well as the handmade starfish cuff.
Beyond creativity, price is another force fuelling renewed interest in costume jewellery. With gold hitting record highs of late, the fine chains and charms recently seen on the runways at Chloé, Isabel Marant and elsewhere, have become a serious investment. American fine-jewellery designers, having absorbed inflation for months, are now passing those costs on to customers. So, if you are looking for jewellery that is impactful then brass patinated in gold or palladium may be the answer.
Materials range from rock crystal and rhinestones to colourful paste-glass cabochons, resin, shell and wood, much of it handmade rather than machine-made – and therefore time-intensive. But the value of costume jewellery lies in creativity, scale and handwork. And, frankly, does the pleasure of jewellery really need to be shared with a security detail?
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