Françoise Montague White and Rose Drop Earrings

Francoise Montague took over the De Saurma jewelry workshop in the late 1940s. Her mother founded the workshop in 1945, according to "Costume Jewelry for Haute Couture" by Florence M...

This piece is an exclusive co-creation between Isabelle K jewelry and Philippe Ferrandis. His sources of inspiration are diverse; nature, history, civilizations serve as starting poi...

Maison Gripoix Vintage White and Light Purple Dangling Earrings. These will always be in style. The Chanel look has never left. It is classic and timeless, conveying a sense of class. It is an elevated look. No matter what you wear, these will look right. A Chanel suit or jeans and a white t-shirt with a blazer. You look stunning and done. These are all you need. Clip on. This look will always walk down the Chanel runway in one form or another. I will send you Velcro dots to hold them on, and you can do cartwheels in these earrings. The models in Paris wear them, and you can quickly wear them for 20 hours. Please ask for them. Guy de Maupassant wrote a famous story about a necklace. The story is about a young, pretty, intelligent, well-educated but poorly endowed bride who has to marry a petty official; thus, suffering from the limitations of living a life with a husband that lacked any exquisite qualities. One day, to entertain his dejected spouse, her husband receives an invitation to a ball and gives his wife the 400 francs he had saved for a hunting rifle so that she can order an appropriate dress. However, when the dress is ready, it becomes clear that it is lacking jewelry, and it would be impossible to attend the ball while looking so poor. The protagonist approaches her wealthy childhood friend, with whom she was raised at the monastery, and borrows a diamond necklace from her. The ball is a great success, and she is the centre of attention. However, when the woman returns home, she discovers that she has lost the necklace. To conceal her faux pas from her friend, she buys a new necklace identical to the one she lost. To pay it off, the woman gets into a huge debt, which, over the years, gradually drags her down the social ladder from the bourgeoisie to poverty. Ten years later, having lost her good looks, the woman encounters her friend on the Champs Elysees, who still looks young, beautiful, and rich. The protagonist reveals to her friend the entire story about the necklace, but her friend replies in amazement that the diamonds were fake and would “cost 500 francs at most.” Maison Gripoix starts out with a dramatic story. In 1869 (or a year earlier, according to other sources), Paris master glassmaker Augustina Gripoix began creating replicas of pearls and crystals, casting glass into various shapes and colors and inserting them into the most sophisticated settings. She used the pâte de verre (glass paste) technique, whereby a traditional ceramic or gypsum form was filled with a multi-colour piece of glass and special gluing substances and then baked in a furnace, resulting in objects featuring fantastical hues. Only Augustina made her crystals by pouring the melted glass paste into the press moulds, skipping the furnace step, allowing her to achieve the purity of colour, transparency, and shine. She found a simple method to create beautiful jewelry, and thus, Marquises, Duchesses, and Princesses queued up. Madame Gripoix would then create replicas of their own jewelry in case of robbery or loss, or unusual pieces for their new wraps, neckpieces, or boas. The so-called ‘costume jewelry’ emerged to a large extent thanks to the work of Maison Gripoix. Augustina Gripoix earned her fame in the 1890s when she began creating necklaces for Sarah Bernhardt to wear on stage and later designed costume jewelry for the first high fashion house of Charles Frederick Worth. Later on, Paul Poiret, the leading couturier of 1910, contacted her, and she created sophisticated Oriental-style jewelry for him to match his famous Oriental costumes, based on the aesthetic of Diaghilev’s initial Russian seasons. The value of costume jewelry was now being recognized in its own right and not just for imitation purposes. The taste of emancipated young girls, who were gaining more and more freedom and opportunities, was best met with bijouterie. So in the 1920s, when Augustina’s daughter Susan became the head of the House, Gripoix prospects became even more exciting. Girls with short-cropped hair in short dresses zoomed by in open-top cars wearing bijou rather than diamonds. Everyone ordered bijouterie from Madam Gripoix during this period, from Jeanne Lanvin to Jean Piguet; however, the best relationship Gripoix had was with Gabrielle Chanel. It is well-known that Chanel, a fan of large jewelry with large stones, made bijouterie super fashionable. Chanel brought copies of Byzantine jewelry to Susanne Gripoix. She asked her to create the pieces in that same style, requesting, “Let everyone think that this jewelry is not new, but found somewhere on an excavation site nearby Rue Camborne.” She was so satisfied with the result of her order that she remained a faithful client of Gripoix for several decades. This was how the famous byzantine style of Chanel jewelry was brought to life, fancying golden Maltese crosses with large multicolor stones and matching bracelets, cabochons, and massive brooches, all of which have become a part of the Gripoix Chanel liked to combine both natural and imitation stones in a single item; for example, she would pair natural and imitation pearls in a single necklace. Gripoix made them in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish between them. Susanne Gripoix created unique, irregularly shaped glass pearls for Chanel, imitating baroque pearls. They were enameled in her workshops with mother-of-pearl to obtain some of the soft shine characteristic of natural pearls . As the leading supplier to the couturier houses in Paris, Gripoix collaborated with many renowned designers, including Cristóbal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, and Christian Dior, as well as Yves Saint Laurent and, later, Christian Lacroix and Marc Jacobs. However, it was the cooperation with Chanel that was the most significant, both for Chanel and for Gripoix. Today, Gripoix is no longer a family-owned company, but the House still crafts jewelry, although the style has undergone considerable changes over the last few years. The jewelry has become more straightforward, more graphical, and even minimalistic. In 2011, however, Gripoix and Catherine Baba...

These charming resin clip-on earrings were designed by Cilea Paris for French jewelry designer Francoise Montague. They feature a Japanese floral inspiration with a dangling shape, a...