Man’s association with jewelry goes a long way back to the stone-age era, where most jewelry were made out of shells, horns, wood, tusks and pebbles. And then, arrived the era of metals—bronze, copper, silver, gold etc. With the discovery of anything new, the earlier trend would get obsolete. However, today with a plethora of metals, materials, stones, gems, et al flooding the jewelry industry, even the stone-age jewelry seems quite prevalent! Jewelry forms a significant part of contemporary fashion in every aspect of lifestyle—casual, formal, hippy, sports, ramp, party etc. There is a wide variety of jewelry available for almost every part of the body—ears, eye brows, nose, lips, chin, neck, wrist, fingers, forearms, navel, ankles and toes—all in different fashions and styles. There is no end to the variety of jewelry available in the markets.
Today, jewelry can be categorized into semi-precious and precious. Semi-precious jewelry includes crystals, simulated diamonds, lab generated gemstones and other natural semi-precious trinkets like Coral, Pearl, Jade, Moonstone, etc. These gems could be set in gold, silver or platinum. Generally, they are set in silver and rolled in gold. The use of Rhodium for polishing jewelry is a highly popular trend now. Swarovski Crystal Jewelry is an ideal example of semi-precious jewelry. Precious gems, of course, include Diamonds, Sapphires, Rubies, Garnet, etc; the bigger they are in size and weight, the more expensive they are. These are set in white, pink or yellow gold or platinum. Also, there is a category of jewelry, preferred by the younger generation such as acrylic, plastic, wood, shells, pebbles and oxidized metals.
Fashion has been and is going to be here for ever and so would be jewelries. Some of the big names in fashion jewelry include Alex and Ani, Betsy Johnson, Judith Jack, Lori Lori, Collection, RJ Graziano, Rosa Flores and Tres Jolie. |
