Costume jewelry is jewelry manufactured as ornamentation to complement a particular fashionable costume

Costume

The term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. Costume may also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances...

 or garment. Costume jewelry came into being in the 1930s as a cheap, disposable accessory meant to be worn with a specific outfit. It was intended to be fashionable for a short period of time, outdate itself

Planned obsolescence

Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period of time...

, and then be repurchased to fit with a new outfit or new fashion style. Its main use is in fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

, as opposed to "real" (fine) jewelry which may be regarded primarily as collectibles, keepsakes, or investments. Costume jewelry is made of less valuable materials including base metals, glass, plastic, and synthetic stones; in place of more valuable materials such as precious metals and gems.

Etymology

The term costume jewelry dates back to the early 20th century. It reflects the use of the word "costume" to refer to what is now called an "outfit"; for example, a "handsome street costume of maroon brown velvet". Costume jewelry is meant to complement a particular fashionable garment or "costume"; Hence the name, "costume jewelry".

Components

Originally, costume or fashion jewelry was made of inexpensive simulated gemstones, such as rhinestone

Rhinestone

A rhinestone or paste or diamante is a diamond simulant made from rock crystal, glass or acrylic.Originally, rhinestones were rock crystals gathered from the river Rhine. The availability was greatly increased around 1775 when the Alsatian jeweller Georg Friedrich Strass had the idea to imitate...

s or lucite, set in pewter

Pewter

Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and lead. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the lower grades of pewter, which have a bluish tint. It has a low melting point, around 170–230 °C ,...

, silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

, nickel

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

 or brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

. During the depression years, rhinestones were even down-graded by some manufacturers to meet the cost of production. An interesting phenomenon occurred during the World War II era, when sterling silver was often incorporated into costume jewelry designs. This was driven by primarily two factors:
1. The components used for base metal were needed for war time production (i.e., military applications) and a ban was placed on their use in the private sector.
2. Base metal was originally popular because it could approximate platinum's color, sterling silver fulfilled the same function.
This resulted in a number of years during which sterling silver costume jewelry was produced and some can still be found in today's vintage jewelry marketplace.

Modern costume jewelry incorporates a wide range of materials. High end crystals, cubic zirconia

Cubic zirconia

Cubic zirconia is the cubic crystalline form of zirconium dioxide . The synthesized material is hard, optically flawless and usually colorless, but may be made in a variety of different colors. It should not be confused with zircon, which is a zirconium silicate...

 simulated diamonds, and some semi-precious stones are used in place of precious stones. Metals include gold- or silver-plated brass, and sometimes vermeil or sterling silver. Lower-priced jewelry may still use gold plating over pewter, nickel or other metals; items made in countries outside the United States may contain lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

. Some pieces incorporate plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

, acrylic, leather

Leather

Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...

 or wood.

Historical expression

Costume jewelry can be characterized by the period in history in which it was made.

Art Deco period (1920–1930s)

The Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 movement was an attempt to combine the harshness of mass production with the sensitivity of art and design. It was during this period that Coco Chanel introduced costume jewelry to complete the costume. The Art Deco movement died with the onset of the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 and the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

According to Schiffer, some of the characteristics of the costume jewelry in the Art Deco period were:

• Free-flowing curves were replaced with a harshly geometric and symmetrical theme
• Long pendants, bangle bracelets, cocktail rings, and elaborate accessory items such as cigarette cases and holders

Retro period (1935 to 1950)

In the Retro period, designers struggled with the art versus mass production

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

 dilemma. Natural materials merged with plastics. Jewelry featured produced American-made jewelry that took on the American look. With the war in Europe, many European jewelry firms were shut down and several designers immigrated to the U.S. Europe was in a deep depression and the U.S. was enjoying an economic recovery.

According to Schiffer, some of the characteristics of the costume jewelry in the Retro period were:

• Glamour, elegance, and sophistication
• Flowers, bows, and sunburst designs with a Hollywood flair
• Moonstones, horse motifs, military influence, and ballerinas
• Bakelite and other plastic jewelry

Art Modern period (1945 to 1960)

In the Art Modern period following World War II, jewelry designs became more traditional and understated. The big, bold styles of the Retro period went out of style and were replaced by the more tailored styles of the 1950s and 1960s.

According to Schiffer, some of the characteristics of the costume jewelry in the Art Modern period were:

• Bold, lavish jewelry
• Large, chunky bracelets, charm bracelets, Jade/opal, charm bracelets, citrine, topaz
  Topaz
  Topaz is a silicate mineral of aluminium and fluorine with the chemical formula Al2SiO42. Topaz crystallizes in the orthorhombic system and its crystals are mostly prismatic terminated by pyramidal and other faces.-Color and varieties:...
  
  
• Poodle pins, Christmas tree pins, and other Christmas jewelry
• Rhinestones

General history

Costume jewelry has been part of culture for almost 300 years. During the 18th century cheap jewelry made with glass started getting made. After almost a century, in the 19th century, costume jewelry made of semi precious material came into the market. The use of semi precious material made the jewelry available in the hands of the common people.

But the real golden era for the costume jewelry began in the middle of the 20th century. The new middle class

Middle class

The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

 desired to own beautiful but affordable jewelry, and this desire was realized by its perfect timing: it came during the machine-age and the industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

. All this made possible the production of carefully executed replicas of beautiful and admired heirloom

Heirloom

In popular usage, an heirloom is something, perhaps an antique or some kind of jewelry, that has been passed down for generations through family members....

 pieces.

As the class structure in America changed, so did measures of real wealth. Women in all social stations, even the working-class woman, could own a small piece of costume jewelry. The average town and country woman could acquire and wear a considerable amount of this mass-produced jewelry that was both affordable and stylish.

Many feel that the machine has spoilt the beauty of the hand-made costume jewelry; the truth is that the machine has made fashion jewelry more affordable and has enabled people to produce enough of this jewelry to fuel the interest of millions of ladies from all around the world.

Costume jewelry was further made popular by various designers in the mid-20th century. Some of the most remembered names in costume jewelry include both the high and low priced brands: Crown Trifari, Dior

Dior

Dior can mean:* Christian Dior SA, a French clothing retailer* In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth legendarium:**Dior Eluchíl, a Half-elven of the First Age**Dior , a Steward of GondorDior is a surname, and may refer to:...

, Chanel

Chanel

Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...

, Miriam Haskell

Miriam Haskell

Miriam Haskell was an American designer of costume jewelry. Like Hattie Carnegie, Haskell founded her own company, one that still bears her name. With her creative partner Frank Hess, she invented affordable pieces of stunning originality from 1920 through the 1950s...

, Monet, Napier

Napier Company (jewellery)

The Napier Company is an American jewellery manufacturing company, and was one of the first modern corporations in the United States.-History:...

, Corocraft

Corocraft

The Coro costume jewelry company started doing business in 1901, producing jewelry under several brand names, including Corocraft. Some of their more notable products include the Coro Duettes, Coro Tremblers, Coro Door Knockers and Coro Crown Pins...

 and Coventry

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

.

A significant factor in the popularisation of costume jewellery was the Hollywood movie. The leading female stars of the 1940s and 1950s often wore and then endorsed the pieces produced by a range of designers. If you admired a necklace worn by Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

 in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex is a 1939 historical romantic drama film. It is based on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I, portrayed by Bette Davis, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, played by Errol Flynn...

, you could buy a copy from Joseff of Hollywood, who made the original. Stars such as Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...

, Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

 and Jane Russell

Jane Russell

Jane Russell was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s....

 appeared in adverts for the pieces and the availability of the collections in shops such as Woolworth made it possible for ordinary women to own and wear such jewellery.

Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...

 greatly popularized the use of faux

Fake

Fake means not real.Fake may also refer to:In music:* Fake , a Swedish synthpop band active in the 1980s*Fake?, a Japanese rock band* Fake , 2010 song by Ai featuring Namie Amuro...

 jewelry in her years as a fashion designer, bringing costume jewelry to life with gold and faux pearls.
Kenneth Jay Lane

Kenneth Jay Lane

Kenneth Jay Lane is an American costume jewelry designer.- Biography :Born in Detroit, Michigan he is an alumnus of Detroit Central High School, the University of Michigan and the Rhode Island School of Design....

 has since the 1960s been known for creating unique pieces for Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

, Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland was a noted columnist and editor in the field of fashion. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Born as Diana Dalziel, Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman...

, and Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

. He is probably best known for his three-strand faux pearl necklace worn by Barbara Bush

Barbara Bush

Barbara Pierce Bush is the wife of the 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush, and served as First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She is the mother of the 43rd President George W. Bush and of the 43rd Governor of Florida Jeb Bush...

 to her husband's inaugural ball.

In many instances, high-end fashion jewelry has achieved a "collectible" status, and increases in value over time. Today, there is a substantial secondary market for vintage

Vintage

Vintage, in wine-making, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product . A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and...

 fashion jewelry. The main collecting market is for 'signed pieces', that is pieces which have the maker's mark, usually stamped on the reverse. Amongst the most sought after are Miriam Haskell

Miriam Haskell

Miriam Haskell was an American designer of costume jewelry. Like Hattie Carnegie, Haskell founded her own company, one that still bears her name. With her creative partner Frank Hess, she invented affordable pieces of stunning originality from 1920 through the 1950s...

, Coro

Coro

Coro or CORO may refer to:*Santa Ana de Coro, a Venezuelan city, the capital of Falcón State*Coro region, a geographical region of Venezuela*Coro Province, historic province of Gran Colombia*Coro , Italian for choir...

, Crown Trifari and Sphinx. However, there is also demand for good quality 'unsigned' pieces, especially if they are of an unusual design.

Business and industry

Costume jewelry is considered a discrete category of fashion accessory

Fashion accessory

Fashion accessories are decorative items that supplement and complement clothes, such as jewelery, gloves, handbags, hats, belts, scarves, wigs, watches, sunglasses, pins, stockings, bow ties, hand fans, leg warmers, leggings, neckties, suspenders, and tights....

, and as such it displays many of the characteristics of a self-contained industry. Costume jewelry manufacturers are located throughout the world, with a particular concentration in parts of China and India, where entire city-wide and region-wide economies are dominated by the trade of these goods. There has been considerable controversy in the United States and elsewhere about the lack of regulations in the manufacture of such jewelry—these range from human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 issues surrounding the treatment of labor, to the use of manufacturing processes in which small, but potentially harmful, amounts of toxic metals are added during production. In the United States a scandal broke when it was discovered during testing that cheap costume jewelry from China contained unsafe levels of the metal cadmium

Cadmium

Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, bluish-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Similar to zinc, it prefers oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds and similar to mercury it shows a low...

. The wider issues surrounding imports, exports, trade laws, and globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

, also apply to the costume jewelry trade.

As part of the supply chain

Supply chain

A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to...

, wholesalers in the United States and other major nations purchase costume jewelry from manufacturers and typically import or export it to wholesale distributors and suppliers who deal directly with retailers. Wholesale costume jewelry merchants would traditionally seek out new suppliers at trade shows. As the internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 has become increasingly important in global trade, however, this model has been modified, as many retailers can now select from a large number of wholesalers through the World Wide Web. Some of these sites also market directly to consumers who can purchase costume jewelry at greatly reduced prices. Some of these sites include fashion jewelry as a separate category, while some use this term in favor of costume jewelry. The trend of jewelry-making at home by hobbyists for personal enjoyment or for sale on sites like Etsy

Etsy

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies. These items cover a wide range including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, edibles, bath & beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks and toys. Many individuals also sell craft supplies like beads,...

has resulted in the common practice of buying wholesale costume jewelry in bulk and using it for parts.