Costume Jewelry

Costume Jewelry from Fish Scales to CZ

Whether you spell it jewelry or jewellry, your wallet told you long ago that jewelry comes in two classes: fine jewelry and costume jewelry. And even though fine jewelry is made of "the real thing" and costume jewelry is not, it's often hard for the untrained eye to spot the difference.

But if you'd been present at the birth of costume jewelry in 19th century Europe, you would've no doubt gotten wind of the fact that your pearl costume jewelry, for example, was glass covered with fish scales. And rhinestones were imitating diamonds back then, but the next generation of fake diamonds, cubic zirconia (CZ), was yet to come.

When costume jewelry was still The Next Big Thing, a lot of social change was going on. If you weren't some wealthy 1800s aristocrat dripping with fine jewelry, and if you weren't too poor to afford cheap costume jewelry, you'd be part of the brand new "middle class." You would have been swept into the great tides of the growing European middle class that was spawned by the onset of the industrial revolution. With this came the cheaper alloys, stone substitutes and industrial processes that caused the leap from "real" jewelry for the wealthy to cheap costume jewelry for the masses.

We've used the term "costume jewelry," but of course "fashion jewelry" and "fashion costume jewelry" mean the same thing. Both were called "paste" years ago. That came from the practice of pasting glass "jewels" onto theatrical costumes. And the word "costume" comes from the same theatrical origins but it was also the word for all wearing apparel in the early 1900s. In those days you didn't wear "duds," "threads" or "outfits." You wore "costumes."

The mid 1900s triggered the avalanche of cheap costume jewelry that continues to roll on today. Rings, necklaces, pendants, bracelets, anklets, earrings, toe rings, pins, hair clips, buckles, buttons and more adorn bodies and clothing with such materials as glass, plastic, wood, clay, enamel, shells, bone and more. For metals, the costume jewelry manufacturers use gold- or silver-plated brass, pewter, nickel and sometimes even lead.

Rhinestones, which began as rock crystals collected from Germany's Rhine river, have evolved into excellent imitations of diamonds since 1775 when George Frederic Strass introduced a metal powder coating to the underside of glass. In 1955 came a thin metallic coating that manufacturers applied to crystal stones, and that produced an iridescent effect called "Aurora Borealis." Rhinestones are also made of acrylic plastics. And today we see them on T shirts and jeans, but they adorned the most outlandish costumes of all time when Liberace and Elvis were on stage.

The costume jewelry marketplace has expanded into vintage costume jewelry as collectibles and as the latest greatest look. Vintage jewelry is usually at the high end of this class, but now we see tons of imitation vintage jewelry everywhere. You know, like costume jewelry imitating costume jewelry that itself is an imitation of fine jewelry ;-).

And now, let's have fun with wholesale costume jewelry!