During Fashion Week in September, the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels hosted a party for customers, celebrities and the press at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Demi Moore, Ashley Olsen and Mischa Barton were part of the audience that made its way past a series of living tableaus in which models posed mute and stone-faced in the company?s jewels. I accompanied Deirdre Murphy Bader, a former Olympic cyclist and Van Cleef customer, and her husband, Larry Bader, a lawyer and Van Cleef bill payer.
Inside, past the maze of mannequins, Lido dancers, flown in from Paris for the occasion, can-canned across the stage, diamond collars around their throats, their breasts held nakedly aloft in glittering, cupless brassieres. ?Would you look at that jewelry?? Mr. Bader said, averting his eyes. The audience sat mesmerized at cabaret tables while waitresses passed canapés on linen napkins and a pair of models strode the runway, each carrying a sparkling leash attached to a poodle, one white, the other dyed a deep plush pink.
For all the variety the evening offered in terms of entertainment, one thing remained consistent: the vast number of women wearing necklaces, bracelets and rings from Van Cleef?s Alhambra line. Alhambra, with its clover-shaped charms, was introduced in the late ?60s but slumbered for decades. Then, with the addition of some new pieces in 2001, celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and Sharon Stone rediscovered the line. Now Alhambra clovers have silently stolen around the necks of women across the planet, becoming an iconic symbol of wealth and inclusion on a par with the Birkin bag or, in an earlier decade, the Bulgari coin necklace.
The classic line retails from about $1,200 for a pair of earrings to $61,200 for a necklace of diamond clovers, weighing in at 10.5 carats total. Each clover, modeled after the quatrefoil in Moorish architecture, is often referred to as a ?station,? which to a Catholic ominously evokes the stations of the cross but somehow seems appropriate, considering the ardor with which Alhambra is collected. Mrs. Bader, for example, has acquired a pink opal necklace, turquoise earrings, a turquoise necklace, a long mother-of-pearl necklace, mother-of-pearl earrings and a mother-of-pearl watch.
Alvina Patel, the publicity director for Van Cleef in New York, invited me to the boutique on 57th Street to sift through the velvet drawers. I asked her about market saturation: when is it too much? ?There will be ebbs and flows in the market,? Patel said. ?Right now we?re on an up cycle, and we can?t keep the stuff in the store.? The company apparently has plans for world domination, having recently introduced Magic Alhambra, combining large and small clovers; Lucky Alhambra, combining heart, leaf and butterfly shapes with the clovers; and Sweet Alhambra, a line for children and their mothers, starting at around $800. Laura Linney wore Alhambra earrings as the uptight Upper East Side Mrs. X in ?The Nanny Diaries.?
Knockoffs are rampant. A New York socialite I know had her Alhambra necklace made on 47th Street for a quarter of the retail price. Heidi Klum appropriated the clover design for the jewelry she designs for Mouawad, and Web sites such as Overstockjeweler.com offer copies for $180. Van Cleef has filed more than 10 lawsuits in the past year alone.
Marion Fasel, a jewelry editor for InStyle magazine, said the popularity of Alhambra is unique in its universality. ?I see it on celebrities, and I see it on the street, and I see it on the subway, and I don?t know if it?s real or fake, but I am just amazed at how much I see it,? she said.
And thus the question is begged. If everyone is wearing something, why would anyone want to buy it? Even Patel of Van Cleef acknowledged that retail ubiquity is the kiss of death. ?I know that when I see a handbag being knocked off on the street, I stop carrying it,? she told me. I asked Richard Conniff, the author of ?The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide,? why everyone would want to wear the same thing. ?It is basically a badge of admission,? Conniff said. ?People conform to show that they are part of a group. But then they utterly hate you if you shatter the illusion of individuality by pointing out their conformity.? Oops.
Nevertheless, when I wrapped the 16 stations of the long gold necklace (retail price: $12,900) around my neck at London Jewelers in Southampton, where you can?t walk down Main Street without seeing a woman in an Alhambra necklace, I couldn?t help but admire its beauty, its heft, its invocation of both the exotic (my mind flashed on Peter O?Toole in ?Lawrence of Arabia?) and the utterly wholesome (Reese Witherspoon). But I wasn?t prepared to go all the way yet. I went home, logged on to Overstockjeweler.com and bought a ?Van Cleef & Arpel [sic] Inspired Yellow Gold Plated Mother of Pearl Alhambra Multi Charm Bracelet? for $54.99 instead.
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