Not quite the finishing touch ... just need my pearls!

Evening is where pearls really shine. That doesn’t only happen under ultra-violet lights! Pearls are such a luxurious, elegant, and beautiful item that they really look best with flowing dresses, sleek fabrics and the high, high heels of evening wear. We look at some of our fave pearl products for a night on the town!

Long black pearl rope

Pearl ropes make you feel like a decadent millionaire … the free flowing feel of having a shifting double length, rather than two side by side strings, helps get you loosey and goosey for a great night ahead! The necklace pictured is a 36″ strand made up of AA+ grade, 6-7mm pearls.

Tahitian baroque bracelet

You’ll generally have much more style leeway in your evening wea wardrobe than your day wear one, and this is where baroque pearls can come into their element. Each has its own gorgeous individual shape, and together these off round pearls make for an artistic whole. In the bracelet pictured, this is accented by an individual post and ring clasp. While these sort of clasps aren’t generally suitable for everyday wear, they look modern (and hot) when the sun goes down!

Black Tahitian Pearl Hoop Earrings

Hoop pearl earrings are your evening alternative to studs. They are often a little more expensive, as they must be round, whereas stud type earrings can utilise the flat sided freshwater pearls. At almost 70% off the list price, though, this particular pair is mighty tempting!

Multi-colored princess length strand of pearls

Use the night time to experiment with your look - these multi colored pearls are unique and much more versatile than you might think. They are a princess length strand of 18″, composed of AA+ grade 6-7mm diameter pearls.

Peach/Pink Freshwater Pearl Bracelet

Team up your multi-colored necklace with an individual bracelet like the peach-pink one shown. You can pick this 7.5mm, AA+ grade bracelet up for as much as you might pay for a meal at a nice restaurant. Hard to pass up!

Reese Witherspoon, bringing sexy back to pearls

Reese Witherspoon’s cute, sexy, elfin looks are often at odds with her strong personality, determined views, and downright loud voice! Inside voices please, young lady! One thing that always suits her look though, is her jewellery style. It’s simple and classy … mainly because it features plenty of pearls!

Reese is a blonde, so the creaminess of white pearls always works well with her coloring. Pink pearls also look great on blondes like Reese, but let the colors do the talking if you want to emulate her simple style - no need for extras like fancy clasps or strangely strung designs.

Reese Witherspoon and her favourite pearl earrings

Pearls are also a great jewelry choice if you want to create a shimmering backdrop for another hot piece (like your legs - Reese’s metallic mini seen in LA recently is a great example!). Never scene stealers, and always subtle, pearls go with most anybody, and any look.

Ms Witherspoon is often seen in pearl earrings, rather than necklaces or bracelets. Pearl earrings, handily, are often much more budget friendly than other types of pearl jewelry, as the flat-sided freshwater pearls can easily be incorporated into earrings with class. As well as being cheaper, they are also lighter. There’s nothing stranger than coming home with oddly stretched feeling earlobes at the end of the day!

If you want to copy Reese’s understated look, start with the freshwater pearl earrings, and move onto some of the other designer pieces she’s been spotted with, like the Gucci Pearl Honey Sunglasses, or the Yves Saint Laurent Yris nude bag below. Me-ooww! (With a Southern accent!)

It wasn’t until the sixties that female fashion really started to gain a more casual edge. Before that, even in the twenties when off-the-shoulder dresses and floaty fabrics made fashion seem casual. But women still spent hours meticulously applying ‘natural look’ makeup, and fashion was still a thing for boutiques, not $2 shops. Ah, those were the days! ‘I feel faint, darling! Bring me my smelling salts! Oh …’ *falls into a ladylike repose*.

So we’re pretty happy that mid-century fashion is making a comeback, with lace tights, piping and pearls all on the agenda for this season. We have a look at how slick, smart and coiffed you can look with the combination…

Lace Tights

A great way to both flaunt sexy legs, and smooth over anything you don’t like about your pins. They don’t have to go with satin slips, chunky boots, overdone eyeliner and a dreary outlook on life - lace tights are a beautiful way to add a bit of verve to an office outfit.

Lace tights are coming back - Photo: Shecky's

Piping

For some of us, including me, piping never really went out of fashion. It was big in the 50s, and carried on, in different incarnations, into 60s fashion also. It’s a clean way to add detail to a piece, and oftentimes you can do it yourself, if you have a sewing machine and the guts to put a nice piece of clothing under the needle!

Piping is coming back too - Photo: Shecky's

Pearls

Pearls - Deliciously silky

Some styles of pearls have such a classical look - if you’re going for mid-century glam, you’ll be looking for mid-size strings of pearls, around 18″ long, in single strands and all one color, rather than multi-colored pieces. However, lavender and pink pearls are just as ladylike, glamorous and super-stylish as black and white. Pearl bracelets are a good choice - remember, you’re harking back to when women did nothing more strenuous than pick up the telephone, or tap on a keyboard for work. Ah, the life!

Fashion weeks are always a bit of hit and miss affair, for the common person like us. If your legs don’t end around your ears, you don’t have a makeup artist and haven’t spent hours perfecting a pout (not to mention, you don’t have a catwalk to wear the clothes on!), there sometimes isn’t much for you.

Paris Fashion Week this year is just over, with much the same results. We look at the styles we will be looking to incorporate into our wardrobes - and the ones we won’t!

Alexander McQueen Dress

This Alexander McQueen number was one of the most photographed at the show, it can be seen all over the web. A lovely mix of jewellery and fashion!

John Galianno's Feather Shoes

Louis Vuitton - aCOOLpulco !

John Galianno and Louis Vuitton had some big winners in foot wear - the exotic color of Louis Vuitton’s Acapulco-themed heels was only destroyed by the fact that you need to be able to balance on the pointes of your toes to wear them … but we look forward to slightly lower copies! We believe the feathered numbers are John Gallianno’s work but it is difficult to ell from the Spanish page they come from J. Great match for winter faux furs, though.

And now onto the ‘not’s …

All those ruffles just aren’t practical - not to mention, just aren’t cheap. An elegant shape and look, but better suited to the top of a wedding cake.

Fashion - but only for amputees

Only one point - where does your other arm go?

And maybe one more … how do you do it up?!

This Christian Dior and John Galianno collaboration is not quite a do-at-home job, is it?! Impressive, but again - for Fashion Week ONLY!!!