Musings on Pearls for the Ivy Style Woman

By Isobel Harte

“There’s nothing more flattering than pearls,” says Andreas Kronthaler, creative director of [fashion designer] Vivienne Westwood. “They play with the whites of your eyes and teeth; pearls really talk to you. And they work on everybody, from young to old… You can wear them all the time—it’s one of the few things you can. You can even wear them for breakfast!” – Elle, June 23, 2025

“Pearls are always appropriate.” – Jackie Kennedy

Pearls may be June’s traditional birthstone, but women born in the other eleven months of the year coopt pearls as their own – they’re universally beloved. For the Ivy Style woman, they are a necessity. We wear them often, although we might not wear them for breakfast. Nor would we likely be interested in the giant, obviously fake pearls Elle magazine goes on to tout as seen on Paris runways this past spring. For us, they are not a fashion trend but the foundation of our jewelry collections. We reflect on 20^th century icons like Grace Kelly or Jackie Kennedy, so often photographed wearing pearls, and agree that they do flatter everyone, from Barbara Bush to Audrey Hepburn.

 

One of the most astonishing display of pearls and the purposeful message that they can convey is the Armada Portrait  of Queen Elizabeth I. Everywhere you look, Elizabeth is adorned with pearls, you  might say armed with them – multiple long strings hang around her neck, she wears large pearl drop earrings, strands are draped across her bodice, pearls are embedded in her sleeves, and they rise from her hair forming a type of halo.  In her case, this excess works in her favor. Pearls were a symbol of chastity in the English Renaissance, defining her as the Virgin Queen, unhampered by a man at her side overriding her decisions. They were just as significant as a symbol of her wealth and her power. At the time of her portrait, Elizabeth’s navy had defeated the mighty Spanish Armada. Her legacy and England’s prosperity were guaranteed.  Her pearls said it all.

In Elizabeth’s time, real pearls were found objects, carefully harvested from oceans and rivers – they were rare and precious. Over time, natural pearls became scarce as they all had to begin organically within an oyster or freshwater mollusk. Oyster beds dwindled and their harvesting, an always dangerous occupation, became more and more difficult.

In 1893, Japanese businessman Mikimoto Kokichi developed the first cultured pearl that could be mass produced by manually inserting an irritant called mother of pearl, a type of nacre, into an oyster’s mantle to stimulate the creation of a pearl. Thus, the cultured pearl was born along with the 20^th century, thereby extending the ability to own pearls to a much larger clientele.

The 20^th century also saw dramatic improvements in the manufacture of fake pearls although jewelry makers had been creating false pearls since antiquity as they have always been a desirable gemstone. Venetian pearl makers in the 1400s created pearls by coating glass beads with a mixture of egg whites, powdered glass, and snail slime. These slightly disgusting ingredients yielded imitation pearls so real looking, the makers got into trouble for cutting into the profits of Venetian merchants who traded in real pearls. Today some artificial pearls are so beautiful, they can’t be distinguished from real ones, except perhaps by their feel. Real pearls are heavier than imitation ones.

Faux pearls can easily be mistaken for the real thing if one wears them with enough panache. A case in point is the three strand necklace Jackie Kennedy purchased from Bergdorf Goodman in the 1950s for around $35. These weren’t the only pearls Jackie owned, but they were among her favorites. She wore them everywhere and continued to do so when she became First Lady, even on occasions of state. Now they are in the Smithsonian, given to the museum by the owners of The Franklin Mint who made a fortune from them.  They bought her $35 pearls at auction for $211,000, duplicated the original necklace, and sold a limited number of copies for a gross profit of $26 million. As The Franklin Mint’s Lynda Resnick put it in an excerpt from her book Rubies in The Orchard: “By wearing those iconic pearls, women everywhere could channel a bit of Jackie.”

Barbara Bush also wore fake pearls. Her signature three strand necklace was created by Kenneth Jay Lane, a legendary New York costume jewelry maker, which still sells copies of the Barbara Bush pearl necklace on their website for $165. Mrs. Bush was open about her faux pearls, not caring to disguise the fact that they were fake and therefore relatively attainable by the average American woman. They were her trademark as First Lady, and she rarely took them off even after her husband left office. The New York Times published an article about her titled “Soft Power in Fake Pearls” which shows her wearing the pearls with a stunning designer gown to an inauguration ball in 1989. The takeaway for us is that the cost of our pearls shouldn’t matter.

Ivy Style women wear pearls proudly but quietly. Not concerned about changing styles, we are not worried we’ll be mistaken for our mothers or our grandmothers. If we have inherited our pearls from them, we consider ourselves lucky. And whether we choose to wear real or manufactured pearls, we wear them with elegance and grace.

Isobel Harte is the pen name of this week’s Ivy Style contributor. She is the author of several children’s educational books on events in American history and has written a time travel romance novel which is still in search of a publisher.