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!

"Isn't the parallel of white gold and pearls beau chic, honey?!"

Most pearl dealers worth their sea-salt (har de har!) will give you a choice of fittings when you are purchasing your pearls. While yellow gold gives a traditional, classical impression, and sterling silver is cheaper than anything else, it is white gold teamed up with pearls that gives you that sleek modern look, without the enormous price tag of diamonds!

White gold is created by mixing pure gold with differing parts of platinum. White gold has gotten a bad rap over the years, as around one in eight people have a mild allergic reaction to the nickel that used to be used to create white gold. Since jewellers upped their standards and started using platinum, rarer and more expensive than nickel, there have been few problems reported.

Lavender Pearl Earrings on White Gold

If you love the subtlety of pearl jewelry in general, white gold is the best base to choose to maintain that barely-there look. You can see how it creates a very cool-colored, sleek and aloof look with the lavender pearl earrings above.

Another way to use white gold in pearl jewelry is to create the complete opposite of tradition … have golden pearls set on white gold, rather than white pearls set on golden gold ;-). This approach works best when you can see the base metal, as in hoop earrings or in cufflinks for men. Striking and sexy!

While pure gold is 24 carats, in this case, more pure is not necessarily better. Pure gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals, with a single gram being able to be beaten into a sheet a meter square. You can just imagine how that would stand up under your everyday treatment! This is why gold is usually alloyed with something … and as white gold is an alloy by definition, the highest caratage you’ll find it in is 22ct.

However, around 14ct is the perfect purity for white gold pearl jewelry. It is affordable, difficult to scratch, and very durable. And really, you’ll be the only person to know whether you are wearing 18ct or 14ct!

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!)

By her who in June was born, no gem save pearls shall be worn. They will ensure her constancy, true friendship and fidelity

Have you found yourself drifting into the toaster and kettle aisle again, wondering if your Mom, sister, aunt, wife or girlfriend would like a milkshake maker or a pro juicer best?

Have even the sales assistants in the lingerie section refused to help you … you just seem a bit too desperate?

Good gifts are hard to come by, especially when you’re buying for someone you don’t see on a regular basis. This is where jewelry is always a great option. It doesn’t have to be used all the time, but is guaranteed to be used sometimes! It’s personal, its elegant, and so many gals feel guilty about spending money on jewelry for themselves… but love it when other people do! Best of all, you have readymade gift ideas laid out before you, depending on what month your giftee is born in.

Pearls are the birthstone for June. This tradition originates from a Gregorian Birthstone poem, wherein pearls are supposed to ensure constancy, true friendship, and fidelity. Although you’d hope that she doesn’t start telling lies about you or kissing other boys as soon as she takes off her necklace, earrings, or bracelet!

Here are the rest of the traditional birthstones:

Birthstones

January - Garnet

February - Amethyst

March - Aquamarine

April - Diamond (High maintenance chicks!)

May - Emerald

June - Pearl and Moonstone (They both have the same muted luster)

July - Ruby

August - Peridot

September - Sapphire

October - Opal or Tourmaline (An odd combination, but everyone is entitled to their opinion!)

November - Topaz or citrine (both have beautiful clarity and bright colors)

December - Turquoise or blue topaz (blue topaz added because turquoise is quite difficult to get hold of).

Pearls are a versatile stone, and also a great accent for other month’s birthstones. They go beautifully with any of the big four gemstones - diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds. Pearls also make a great contrast for garnets, and create a ‘whiter shade of pale’ atmosphere with subtle aquamarine.

Individually knotted pearls. Note that tiny bit of string at front. Naughty!

It’s a sound that makes your heart drop to your shoes … CLATTER … Clatter … clatter … rollllll… The sound of a pearl string finally giving way, and discovering that they weren’t individually knotted!

Hopefully this isn’t the case for most of you - reputable pearl dealers and jewellers ensure that their pearls are all individually knotted. I know Pearls of Joy certainly do. However, even though only one pearl fell off, the whole string still needs to be redone!

When we recommend pro re-stringing

If you have very expensive pearls, heirloom pearls, or pearls with sentimental value, we recommend having a professional restring them. You’ll be using lighters and needles, and nerves aren’t always conducive to steady hands! Practice on your daughter’s or niece’s plastic pearl necklace before trying it on the real deal.

If you want to practice re-stringing

Be aware that you’ll probably need to practice your skills every so often to keep them sharp. Otherwise it’s like learning to ride a bike all over again … there’ll be scrapes and tears! That said, don’t be put off re-stringing your own pearls. It is very achievable, and you can get professional quality results with a bit of practice. So here are the ‘knots and bolts’ (!) of re-stringing pearls!

You’ll need:

-          A beading needle or beading wire

-          Size E thread, either silk or synthetic. Silk is preferable.

-          Container for the pearls

-          Sharp scissors with a fine point

-          A match or lighter if you are using synthetic thread.

Start by collecting all of your materials in one place. The only thing worse than breaking a necklace and finding it wasn’t individually knotted, is coming back into your pearl-fixing room to see the dog swallowing hard, with a funny look on his face…

Cut off your thread, and be generous. Use at least three times the length of your necklace.

You’ll then have to separate the silk thread into it’s four or so individual strands. Take one thin strand, about five inches long, and thread it through the eye of your needle. Make a knot in one end - this is sort of like enlarging the eye of your needle to a million times its original size. Much easier!

Then cut off your triple length strand of silk thread and double it over, then pop it through your enlarged needle eye. This completes the needle threading process (end chapter. You may now stop the tape. Hsssss … ;-D )

You can then cut off half of the clasp, thread the needle through the hole and then immediately re-loop it back through the enraged eye.

Cut the rest of your pearls off the necklace, one by one, to avoid any more mishaps. One is usually enough! Sometimes jewellers create subtle size graduations in their pearl necklaces that may be difficult to distinguish by eye, this is why the one-by-one method is best.

You will then string all the pearls onto the thread … but don’t tie any knots yet! Take the needle out and tie a double knot at the end of your necklace thread, to hold all of the pearls on while you’re doing the individual knots.

Start doing your knots, beginning at the end where the half clasp is tied on already. Just usual over, under, in and out knots are required, nothing fancy. Anything else gets a bit chunky (although this can be an individual sort of look). To get the knots close to the pearl, hold the loop on the pearl’s surface, separate the two threads, and then pull the knot closed.

Stay focused on getting the knots close to the pearls - practice makes perfect. Yes, Mom, I know!

When you’ve finished, tie on the remaining half of the clasp with a tight double knot, or any other fancy-pants variety you know :-). If you are using synthetic thread, you can very carefully burn the ends away. If using silk thread, put a very small drop of superglue at the clasp end.

And then breathe a big sigh of relief, congratulate yourself, and go pour a big gin and tonic!

The look of creamy, softly shining white pearls creates such a definite look. Pearls are class, they’re vintage charm, they’re the rosewater and jasmine smell of your Nana. Equally beautiful, but in a spicy, bracing sort of way, are black pearls.

True black pearls come from a species of oyster called Pinctada Maragitifera, also known as a black lipped oyster. It’s a simple genetic difference that makes these oysters create pearls with a black, rather than white hue. This species of oyster lives around Tahiti, Kiribati and the Cook Islands, so the term black pearl is used interchangeably with Tahitian pearls often.

Oddly enough, black pearls can be almost white in color! It’s one of those annoying tricks of biologists, whereby a ‘black snake’ is most often gray, and ‘green tree frogs’ are often dappled and camouflaged.

Before the development of peal culturing techniques, black pearls were extremely rare … about as rare as an albino person. Only one in ten thousand pearls discovered was a black pearl. And even ten thousand natural pearls took a fair bit of time and effort to get! T he black pearls that actually look black sit towards the silver end of the scale, while deeper colored black pearls, and therefore more valuable ones, are a purplish-green hue. Sort of like an oil slick on the road, only much more elegant!

Baroque Tahitian Pearl Bracelet

While black pearls have certainly become much more affordable than the $15,000 that a single gem was once worth, they are still up the luxury end of the scale! One cost-effective way to buy them is as Baroque Tahitian Pearls, slightly off round pieces that have an artistically individual effect.

Another bonus of buying black pearls is that the larger diameters are much more common. Where the oysters that produce Akoya Pearls are rarely capable of developing anything more than 8mm in diameter, simply because of their size (it would be like a tiny Japanese lady having a 13 pound African baby!), black lipped oysters are much bigger. Their size allows the pearls to grow up to 12mm frequently.

Ivanka and her diamond tassel earrings, also available in pearl variety

God bless her … as many times as you may have cursed and railed at Ivanka Trump, enraged that one person could have so many opportunities, so much beauty, and so much of a bosom, you also have to love her. We do, anyway … If only because she, like us, luurrves pearls!

In a recent interview with Glam, Ivanka named pearls as the first investment piece of jewelry that any woman should buy. In my view, that should ideally be the first piece that is bought for you - but that’s a small matter! Ivanka said that the first piece a girl should get is ” pearls, like the tassel pearl earrings in my collection. [They] are must-have basic for any woman’s jewelry wardrobe. It’s a true building block and goes with just about any outfit.”

Pearls were also the first piece of jewelry that Ivanka had bought for her - old Donald Duck got her a strand of pearls to wear as a necklace, when she was 12. I think when I was twelve I got a Babysitter’s Club book and perhaps a new sweater … injustice sensors being activated!

South Sea pearl necklace - like Ivanka's first

While diamonds are the focus of her new jewelry collection, pearls also play a role, as you might expect for someone to whom they have such sentimental value. She mentioned her pearl earrings, and the shape and character of pearls is emulated in with beads of white agate, black onyx and rock crystal, all the most dramatic yet versatile colors. Ivanka’s Pave diamond bead necklace also brings together the beautiful shape of pearls with the sparkle of diamonds.

Be nice to be rich, wouldn’t it? Fortunately pearls don’t have to start in the tens of thousands, like Ivanka’s collection. Check out the Pearls of Joy collection as a start!

Pearl jewelry comes in all shapes and sizes … while there are plenty of affordable pieces, a person has to dream once in a while! We present some of history’s most famous pearls. These are made even more amazing by the fact that in centuries past, pearl farming techniques were not known, so each of these had to be found naturally.

The Abernathy Pearl - Biggest Scottish

This pearl was found in Scotland, in a local variety of mussel by a professional pearl diver in the Tay River. It is outstanding quality, and a natural freshwater pearl - very rarely found!

It was displayed for 30 years, until it was sold in 1992 … although we’ll never know how much for. It was a secret, they’re not telling us, nerny nerny ner ner!

The Arco Valley Pearl - Second Biggest Ever

This is widely thought to be the second biggest pearl ever found, and was reportedly given to Kubla Khan, Momgol ruler (who in Xanadu did a veritable pleasure dome erect), by Marco Polo. It was found again only recently, and auctioned in 2007. A European company owns it - it weighs 575 carats, or 2301 grains.

The Jomon Pearl - Oldest Pearl

The oldest known pearl in the world, it has been carbon dated at more than 5,500 years. And not a wrinkle or age spot on it! Hand cream and plenty of vegetables is the secret, boys and girls ;-). It was found near Japan, the region which the Jomon era of 10,000 to 300BC occured in.

Paspaley Pearl - Very large, near perfect

This saltwater pearl was found relatively recently off the coast of Australia, by Paspaley Pearling Co. It weighs 243 grains, or around 61 carats, so is not the largets, but is almost perfectly round, and has excellent luster and a beautiful surface for its size.

Pearl of Lao-tze

This is the largest pearl in the world, but there is a catch - it is not gem quality. It comes from a giant clam, and lacks the lustrous outer nacre that people prize in pearls. It has a wonderful abstract shape, rather like an ink-blot painting that doctors use to tell whether you are crazy…!

You can read plenty about Akoya pearls, South Sea pearls, Tahitian pearls and freshwater pearls on the web. Everybody that sells them is keen to tell you about these common variants. Today we’re looking at some of the less common varieties of pearls, their features … and who will love them!

Conch Pearls - For Chic Chicks!

Conch pearls look quite different to the pearls we are used to - they do not have a lustrous nacre on the outside. However, they are still extremely valuable, because nobody has devised a method to culture them! All conch pearls are natural pearls, so if you’re looking into a conch pearl piece of jewelry, be prepared for your credit card to slink off, hoping you won’t notice him slip out the door.

Despite a lack of nacre, they can be extremely beautiful, with a ‘flame’ effect in the color.

Keshi Pearls - All Shine

Keshi pearls are the exact opposite of conch pearls - they are all nacre. They are formed as part of the culturing process, when the oyster rejects the implanted nucleus, but continues producing a pearl anyway. Keshi pearls used to be bargain pearls with a beautiful look - now they are much rarer since pearl farmers have begun reimplanting rejected nuclei. Therefore, you know the drill … they are more expensive!

They are extremely high-shine pearls, and beautiful on women who look to dress up and hit the town.

The most prized pearls are often the most unusual

Cortez Pearls

These are simply pearls from a particular type of mollusc - the Pinctada maximia, and Pteria Sterna, which live in the Gulf of California. Cortez pearls as an export for Mexico were once worth more than all the country’s other exports combined. They were fished almost to extinction, resulting in a ban on hunting the molluscs, however culturing technology has brought them back.

Cortez pearls have a gorgeous thick nacre and are reasonably large - and they are also the only pearl in the gem industry to completely qualify under the Fair Trade Gems protocols. Great for luxury loving yet eco-friendly women!

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!