If you could open a well-dressed woman's jewelry box in 1955, you would not find much fine jewelry. You would find costume jewelry, chosen carefully and worn with pride. After years of wartime rationing, glamour was back, and the pieces women collected in those years tell us a lot about how they dressed and lived.
Here is what you would likely have found inside.
A strand of pearls
Pearls were the finishing touch of the decade, and faux pearls made the look affordable. The most famous example was the First Lady herself, pictured above. On January 20, 1953, Mamie Eisenhower wore a three-strand faux pearl choker by Trifari to her husband's inaugural ball. If costume pearls were good enough for the White House, they were good enough for everyone.
A matching set
Christian Dior's New Look, shown in Paris in 1947, set the silhouette for the next ten years, with nipped waists, full skirts and soft shoulders. An outfit that polished called for jewelry to match. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches were designed to be worn together as a set, and a woman might build her set one piece at a time.
A Paris couture show by Jacques Fath in Amsterdam, November 1950. Photo: Daan Noske / Anefo, Nationaal Archief (CC0)
A brooch, or several
No 1950s jacket or coat was complete without one. Brooches shaped like flowers and leaves were pinned to lapels, collars and even hats. Coro, the largest costume jewelry maker of its time, and Lisner, known for its nature-inspired designs, made them by the thousands. Our Ledo gold-tone rose brooch and Crown Trifari leaf cluster brooch are the kind of piece that would have been worn on a Sunday coat.
Something that sparkled
Rhinestones were plentiful again after the war, and in the mid-1950s Swarovski and Christian Dior introduced the aurora borealis finish, a rainbow coating named for the northern lights. It was an instant hit for evening wear. Our Sarah Coventry AB rhinestone starburst brooch shows off that shimmer.
Gilt for winter, white for summer
Women changed their jewelry with the seasons. A 1954 issue of Woman's Weekly advised "gilt in winter and white beads in summer." Gold-tone pieces came out with wool coats, and milk glass and white beads came out with cotton dresses.
Where it all came from
A woman might have bought her pieces at a fine department store, at the five-and-dime, or at a home party in a neighbor's living room. Sarah Coventry, founded in 1949, sold only at those parties and never in stores. It was a real purchase, too. A 1959 Trifari ad priced a necklace at $10 and earrings at $5, at a time when the federal minimum wage was $1.00 an hour.
That is why so many of these pieces survived. They were cared for, saved, and passed down. When one comes to us, we do our best to tell its story.
Photo at top: First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress (public domain)
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