Costume jewellery — known in the American trade as fashion jewellery — is jewellery made principally from base metals, glass, plastics, synthetic stones, and other non-precious or semi-precious materials, designed to complement and change with fashion rather than to function as a store of monetary value. Far from being a lesser category, costume jewellery has produced some of the most inventive, culturally resonant, and technically accomplished ornamental objects of the twentieth century. Its history is inseparable from the history of modern dress, from the democratisation of luxury, and from the careers of designers — Coco Chanel foremost among them — who used deliberate artifice as an aesthetic manifesto.

Definitions and Distinctions

The boundary between costume jewellery and fine jewellery is conventionally drawn at materials: fine jewellery employs precious metals (gold, platinum, silver to a lesser degree) and natural gemstones of recognised value; costume jewellery substitutes base metals — brass, pot metal, white metal, rhodium-plated alloys — for precious ones, and glass, paste, rhinestones, lucite, bakelite, and synthetic or simulated stones for natural gems. The term bridge jewellery occupies an intermediate zone, typically using sterling silver or gold-filled metal with semi-precious stones, but this category is a trade convenience rather than a historical one.

The word "costume" in this context derives from the theatrical and dressmaking sense of the word — an ensemble, a complete look — rather than implying disguise or deception. A piece of costume jewellery does not pretend to be fine jewellery; on the contrary, the most celebrated designers in the field embraced and announced its artificiality.

Historical Origins

Ornamental objects made from non-precious materials are as old as human adornment itself. Egyptian faience beads, Roman glass paste gems, and Renaissance strass (lead glass cut to simulate diamonds) all demonstrate that the impulse to create beautiful ornament independently of precious materials has never required justification. The Viennese jeweller Georg Friedrich Strass, working in Paris in the early eighteenth century, perfected a highly refractive lead glass that bore his name and was worn openly at the French court — not as deception but as fashionable ornament in its own right.

The industrial revolution transformed the production of non-precious jewellery. By the mid-nineteenth century, pressed glass beads from Bohemia (principally from the Jablonec nad Nisou region), stamped brass findings, and electroplated base-metal settings were being manufactured at scale and distributed globally. The Bohemian glass industry, centred on what is now the Czech Republic, supplied the world's costume jewellery trade with beads, rhinestones, and pressed-glass components well into the twentieth century — and continues to do so today through manufacturers such as Preciosa.

The late Victorian and Edwardian periods saw the rise of mourning jewellery in jet and vulcanite, and the widespread use of pinchbeck (a copper-zinc alloy resembling gold) for decorative pieces. These were not shameful substitutes but recognised categories with their own aesthetic conventions. Nevertheless, the cultural prestige of fine jewellery remained overwhelming, and non-precious ornament was generally understood as the province of those who could not afford the real thing.

Chanel and the Legitimisation of Artifice

The decisive cultural rupture came in the 1920s, and its agent was Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. Chanel's contribution to costume jewellery was not technical but philosophical: she wore ropes of fake pearls and glass gems with couture, publicly and unapologetically, at a moment when the social code demanded that a woman of means wear real stones. Her argument — stated in interviews and embodied in her designs — was that jewellery should serve the dress and the woman, not advertise the husband's wealth. "It is disgusting," she reportedly told Paul Morand, "to walk around with millions around your neck just because one is rich."

Chanel collaborated from the early 1920s with the Duke of Westminster's circle and later, more productively, with the artist and designer Fulco di Verdura, who created the famous maltese-cross cuffs encrusted with coloured glass that became emblematic of her aesthetic. She also worked with the Maison Gripoix, a Parisian atelier specialising in poured glass (pâte de verre) set in gilt metal, whose luminous, jewel-like pieces were produced for Chanel from the 1920s onwards and are among the most sought-after vintage costume pieces today.

Elsa Schiaparelli, Chanel's great rival, pushed the surrealist possibilities of non-precious materials even further: her jewellery incorporated insects, found objects, and deliberately shocking imagery, treating the ornamental object as a vehicle for wit and conceptual provocation. Together, Chanel and Schiaparelli established the intellectual respectability of costume jewellery as a design discipline.

The American Industry: Trifari, Miriam Haskell, and Their Contemporaries

While Paris set the cultural tone, the industrial centre of twentieth-century costume jewellery was the United States, and within the United States, Providence, Rhode Island. Providence had been a centre of base-metal jewellery manufacture since the mid-nineteenth century, and by the 1920s and 1930s it housed dozens of manufacturers supplying the rapidly expanding American market.

Trifari (formally Trifari, Krussman & Fishel, founded 1910, restructured under Gustavo Trifari in the 1920s) became the most prestigious American costume jewellery manufacturer of the mid-twentieth century, largely through the design leadership of Alfred Philippe, a trained fine jeweller who had worked at Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels before joining Trifari in 1930. Philippe brought the vocabulary of fine jewellery — invisibly set stones, en tremblant flowers, pavé-set rhinestones, naturalistic motifs — to base-metal production. Trifari's jelly belly brooches of the 1940s, featuring lucite cabochon bodies on figural animals, are among the most recognisable and collected pieces in the field. The firm also produced the inaugural jewellery for Mamie Eisenhower's 1953 and 1957 White House appearances, a commission that underscored how thoroughly costume jewellery had entered mainstream American life.

Miriam Haskell, working from New York from the early 1920s, developed an entirely different aesthetic: densely layered assemblages of Russian gold-washed filigree findings, Venetian glass beads, seed pearls, and hand-wired components that were labour-intensive to produce and distinctly artisanal in character. Haskell pieces were never mass-produced in the conventional sense; their construction, overseen for decades by her chief designer Frank Hess, required skilled hand-assembly. The resulting jewellery has a texture and depth that photographs poorly but rewards close examination, and it has attracted a devoted collecting community.

Other significant American makers include Coro (one of the largest manufacturers, producing pieces across a wide price range), Eisenberg (known for large, high-quality rhinestone pieces), Schreiner (whose inverted-stone settings created unusual optical effects), Weiss, Lisner, and Hobe (which used genuine semi-precious stones alongside costume materials). Each house developed recognisable house styles, and the identification and attribution of unsigned pieces is a specialist discipline within the collecting field.

Kenneth Jay Lane and the Post-War Period

The 1960s brought a new generation of designers who treated costume jewellery as high fashion in its own right. Kenneth Jay Lane, who began his career in shoe design at Dior and later at Roger Vivier, launched his own jewellery line in 1963. Lane's genius was for producing large-scale, bold pieces — massive faux-gem cocktail rings, Byzantine crosses, animal brooches — that were worn by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, and Diana, Princess of Wales, among others. His work demonstrated that the social acceptability of costume jewellery had become complete: women who could afford any jewellery they chose preferred his pieces for their design quality and versatility.

The 1960s and 1970s also saw the rise of plastics as a primary design material. Lucite, acrylic, and earlier bakelite (a phenol-formaldehyde resin developed in 1907 and widely used in jewellery from the 1920s through the 1940s) offered colours and forms impossible in metal or glass. Bakelite jewellery — particularly the carved, laminated, and polka-dot pieces of the 1930s and 1940s — is now among the most actively traded categories in vintage costume jewellery, with significant pieces selling for hundreds or occasionally thousands of pounds at specialist auction.

European Makers and Couture Collaborations

The relationship between Paris couture houses and specialist jewellery ateliers produced some of the most artistically significant costume jewellery of the century. Beyond the Chanel-Gripoix collaboration, notable relationships include:

• Christian Dior and the German manufacturer Henkel & Grosse, which produced Dior-licensed jewellery from 1955 and whose pieces are among the most collected European costume jewellery.
• Yves Saint Laurent, whose bold, graphic jewellery — often produced in collaboration with Roger Scémama and later Loulou de la Falaise — reflected his interest in African, Russian, and Cubist sources.
• Givenchy, whose costume jewellery was characterised by refined, architectural forms.
• The Austrian manufacturer Swarovski, which supplied precision-cut crystal rhinestones to virtually every major costume jewellery manufacturer from the early twentieth century onwards and whose own branded jewellery line, launched in 1977, occupies a position between costume and bridge jewellery.

Italian makers, particularly those working in the Vicenza and Arezzo regions, produced high-quality gilt-metal and enamel pieces that were sold under both house names and couture licences. The Milanese designer Elsa Peretti, though she worked primarily in silver for Tiffany & Co., brought a sculptural sensibility to wearable ornament that influenced the broader field.

Materials and Construction

The technical vocabulary of costume jewellery is distinct from that of fine jewellery and worth understanding for collectors and students alike.

• Rhinestones: Originally rock crystal (Rheinkiesel, pebbles from the Rhine), the term now refers to glass or crystal stones with foil backing that enhances their brilliance. Austrian crystal (Swarovski) and Czech crystal are the principal types.
• Paste: Lead glass cut and faceted to simulate diamonds or coloured gems. High-quality eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paste is collected as fine jewellery in its own right.
• Rhodium plating: A platinum-group metal applied by electroplating to white-metal or silver bases, providing a hard, tarnish-resistant, silvery finish. Widely used from the 1930s onwards.
• Pot metal: A low-melting-point alloy of lead and other base metals, used for cast findings in early twentieth-century American costume jewellery. Prone to deterioration over time.
• Bakelite and early plastics: Bakelite (1907), celluloid (earlier, but flammable and unstable), lucite/acrylic (from the 1930s), and later thermoplastics each have distinct physical properties and collecting profiles.
• Simulated pearls: Glass beads coated with essence d'orient (a suspension of fish scales in lacquer) or, later, synthetic coatings. Majorica pearls, produced in Mallorca from the 1890s, are among the most durable and realistic.

The Collecting Market

Vintage costume jewellery has been seriously collected since at least the 1970s, and the market has matured considerably. Specialist dealers, dedicated auction sales (Christie's, Doyle, and Rago/Wright have all held significant costume jewellery auctions), and a substantial literature now support the field. Prices for the most desirable pieces — signed Miriam Haskell parures, early Trifari jelly-belly brooches, Chanel-Gripoix pieces, and carved bakelite — can reach four to five figures at auction.

Authentication and attribution are central concerns. Signatures (most commonly found on clasps or pin-backs) are the primary attribution tool, but signatures can be removed, added, or forged. Knowledge of house styles, construction techniques, finding types, and period-appropriate materials is essential for confident attribution. The reference literature — particularly Deanna Farneti Cera's Jewels of Fantasy, Harrice Simons Miller's guides to American costume jewellery, and the various monographs on individual makers — provides the documentary foundation for serious collecting.

Condition is critical: rhodium plating wears, pot metal corrodes, rhinestones lose their foil backing, and plastics can craze or discolour. Pieces in original, unworn condition command substantial premiums. Repairs, replacements, and replatings are generally disclosed in reputable auction catalogues and significantly affect value.

Cultural Significance

The history of costume jewellery is, in part, a history of the twentieth century's changing attitudes towards class, gender, and authenticity. The moment when Chanel declared that fake pearls were as beautiful as real ones was also a moment of social commentary: jewellery as inherited wealth, as visible evidence of a husband's means, was being challenged by jewellery as personal expression and aesthetic choice. The democratisation that followed — the availability of well-designed ornament at accessible prices — was not without its critics, but it permanently altered the landscape of personal adornment.

The best costume jewellery of the twentieth century is now understood not as a substitute for something better, but as an art form with its own history, its own masters, and its own standards of excellence. Museum collections — the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History — hold significant costume jewellery holdings, and scholarly attention to the field continues to grow.

Further Reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — costume jewellery collecting overview
• Victoria and Albert Museum — A History of Jewellery