Get The Gilded Age Look – Part 1

Julian Fellowes' new period drama, The Gilded Age, is set in the growing city of New York in 1882 and focuses on the nouveau riche trying to infiltrate the “old money” world of New York society. There's also the upstairs/downstairs dynamic you would expect from a Fellowes production and it has already been renewed for a second season. The period drama is set at the tail end of the Gold Rush, so while gold was plentiful in America, silver was slightly more desirable because of the scarcity. It was only relatively recently in 1859 that a large deposit of silver was discovered in Nevada, so just twenty years later the material would still have been the hallmark, quite literally, of class and sophistication. The costumes in The Gilded Age are almost characters in their own right, especially those of Mrs Bertha Russell, the matriarch of the series' new money family. In one episode she is invited to the opera and departs her palatial Fifth Avenue home in a stunning red bustle dress with an impressive train, worn under an even more ornate cloak with a similarly long train. Each character has an assigned colour palette which dictates what colour clothes and jewellery they wear, but Bertha has the widest palette in the show. Much of the jewellery in the series is lent by jeweller Temple St Clair and while not all of it is true to the period, it definitely fits the aesthetic of each character. Rather than use costume jewellery, the dressers on the drama opted for real stones wherever possible. This is in keeping with the opulent theme of the show, with the new money people wearing more showy jewellery than the old money crowd, who prefer restraint and decorum. Bertha wears a lot of moonstones and diamonds with her blue pieces, so we think the Aqua Blue earrings would be a good bet for accessorising like the grandly dressed Mrs Russell. These gorgeous earrings use the cluster style that is so typical of the period, with the cubic zirconia halo standing in for what would certainly have been diamonds if they belonged to Bertha. The cool tones of the oval aquamarine reflect Bertha's coolness and icy demeanour. Our Lovable Me aquamarine studs are also in keeping with the period, and would look great on Marion Brookes (one of the old money characters) as they are more understated in style. Opals were also a popular gem in these times, and because they were a little cheaper than diamonds and other precious stones these were more accessible to the up and coming new money people who wanted quantity over quality – it was all about scale and grandeur. Mrs Gould, one of the real-life new money set, changed her jewellery several times a day just to show off the scale of her collection. It's this desire for style, even at the expense of substance, which gives the Gilded Age its name; rather than solid gold, gold-plated (or gilded) items were in fashion. Our Opal Reverso necklace would certainly look amazing at the opera and because the oval opal is so large, and flanked by cubic zirconia, it would have been the perfect item to look great through opera glasses. The Shimmer collection (especially the ring) is also a great example of opal jewellery inspired by the period and the spiky mount is a design motif often seen in Victorian era pieces. Following the theme of cheaper alternatives to precious stones, garnets would have been used in place of rubies, peridot in place of emerald, and blue topaz in place of sapphire. These stones are still desirable and much more expensive than a glass or paste alternative, but from a distance they would look like the more expensive alternatives, even to a trained eye. We have precious and semi-precious stones in our collection, but in the modern world we're not so strict about the social status afforded by wearing any particular type of stone. Join us for part 2 of our pick of Gilded Age inspired pieces from the Amore Argento collection.