07.30.08
Beautiful Baubles
Sparkly and fun on the outside, these stylish accessories hide a beautiful secret.
By Joanna Cosgrove
Online Editor
Dazzling pendants, glittering rings and bejeweled bracelets have long been treasured accessories for women of all walks of life. But these days, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Clever engineering has intertwined the once separate functions of jewelry and beauty product packaging, yielding wearable cosmetic vessels that are as beautiful as they are functional.
Wearing a beauty item for all to see isn’t exactly a new concept. Some of the earliest and most well-known consumers of cosmetics and fragranced oils on record – the ancient Egyptians - were known to wear a perfumed cone on top of their heads. The cone, which was worn by the most fashionable citizens, was typically made of ox tallow and myrrh. As the cone warmed and melted, it released a pleasant perfume. More elegant Egyptians wore wigs adorned with small, perfume-filled goblets.
Early in the twentieth century, French perfumers filled beautifully detailed metal figurines with solid fragrance to lend a whimsical décor to a lady’s vanity. But Max Factor, Revlon and Avon can be credited with bringing the concept of wearable fragrance to the masses in the 1960’s and 1970’s by filling pendants and brooches with solid versions of their more popular fragrances. It’s a trend that continues today, with designers such as Michael Kors and Donna Karan putting their own modern twist on fragrance- filled pendants.
Fragrances are just the tip of the wearable beauty item iceberg. Lip glosses filled into shallow pans and tucked into trendy pendants and rings are also all the rage.
Urban Decay, a company poised on the cutting edge of what’s trendy in beauty, has embraced the “beauty as jewelry” trend in its own inspired way, releasing a number of limited edition lip products in recent years. Among the most notable was Commando, a dog tag-inspired package (produced by HCT Packaging of Bridgewater, NJ) that slid open to reveal two lip glosses (0.95g / 0.03 US oz.). Commando’s reflective, lavender tag was ornately embossed with a mix of flowers, skulls, hearts and vines, and hung from a long chain of shot beads that could be adjusted to wear around the neck or on a belt loop.
“We think about everything we create as a little piece of art, albeit one that has to function well too,” commented Wende Zomnir, the company’s executive creative director. “The next logical step for us was to take makeup into another artistic realm, and delve into jewelry. It’s inspired by pure need too: you’re going out and don’t want to take a bag, but you want to look great so lip color to go is a necessity. Why not make it beautiful and wearable?”
Urban Decay’s latest idea is the Stoned Poison Ring. Fully adjustable to fit any sized finger, the limited edition, gunmetal colored ring is topped with an oversized, green-tinted jewel and backed with an intricate metal design to convey interest and depth as the wearer peers through the stone. The jewel is hinged to reveal a secret compartment inside the ring which holds a pan of lip gloss. The ring comes with three pans in different shades (a nude, a pink and a red), so the wearer can interchange her gloss to match her look.
The brains behind the primary design were Ms. Zomnir and her colleague, Amy Zunzunegui, the company’s product development director, with additional ideas coming as part of a collaborative effort from many on the company staff. “Urban Decay’s mantra is that all things Urban Decay must be feminine, dangerous and fun,” said Ms. Zomnir. “This ring fits our brand perfectly: it’s a gorgeous feminine piece of jewelry, it’s got an edgy, dangerous vibe to the design, and wearing your lip gloss as a piece of jewelry is just fun!”
The Stoned Poison Ring was produced by HCT Packaging and filled by Oxygen. It will launch in October, just in time for the holidays, and will bear a suggested retail price of $50.
Juicy Couture of Arleta, CA, has also issued higher-end collectable jewelry filled with lip gloss. The company’s now out-of-circulation, $78 Daisy Lip Gloss Pendant was crafted out of 14-karat gold-plated brass with pave glass details. The company also marketed a limited edition Lip Gloss Charm Bracelet, a 12-karat gold chain link creation that featured two heart-shaped charms that were each filled with a flavored lip gloss on one side of the charm and mirror on the other.
Juicy’s latest jewelry-as-beauty designs are both fun and functional. The Heart with Crown Lip Gloss Pendant ($78) and Viva La Juicy Bowler Bag Lip Gloss Charm ($58) are each hinged to reveal a tiny mirror and neutral pink lip gloss. The weighty Heart pendant is adorned with a crown of crystals, emblematic of Juicy’s logo, and is suspended on a long gold toned chain. The gold-toned Bowler Bag charm is Juicy pink and evocative of the company’s Velour Bowler handbag. Both pieces were created by the company’s own Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, who said the inspiration to create the pieces were borne out of their own love of vintage jewelry. Both items were produced in limited edition runs of about 3,000 pieces.
High-End Highlighting
Those in search of a bronze glow this summer will no doubt delight in two new beauty-as-jewelry launches from Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) and Dior.
The Golden Dior Luminizing Makeup Jewel from Dior is sure to heat things up this summer. A golden highlighter hidden in a chic jeweled pendant, Golden Dior is described by the company as a “luxurious amber cabochon pendant” that opens to reveal a facial highlighter. With dazzling champagne crystals on a chic satin ribbon that ties around the neck, Dior said the pendant’s design was inspired by the stones in Dior’s most recent couture jewelry collections.
The amber-toned pendant swings open to reveal a creamy golden highlighter that delivers a “perfect sun-kissed glow” to eyes, lips, cheeks. The pendant is housed in a black, soft-as-suede travel pouch for safekeeping and retails for $55.
The next time you spy a sparkly bauble that takes your breath away, take a closer look – there might be more than meets the eye.