Cell Phone Partner

The vintage spots in every London postcode have become bonanza country for celebrities hunting for a little retro chic. Stella McCartney, Kylie Minogue and Ewan McGregor, plus any visiting star from LA, can all be seen ransacking the antique, paste and vintage costume-jewellery stalls in Portobello or Camden. “It’s Celebrity City down here,” one Portobello stallholder tells me. “How can I put it?” says a very reticent Max Michelson of S.J. Phillips. “We have had more distinguished personalities in this year than ever before.” That’s all he’ll say, but rumour has it that Mick Jagger goes in to bulk-buy.

It’s the hip thing to wear jewellery that has a provenance. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” said one friend, wearing a £200,000 nineteenth-century diamond family heirloom at a party recently. But as Madonna has discovered, you can attain the aristocratic lifestyle but you can’t conjure up a vault full of family jewels. You have to buy another family’s hand-me-downs, or pieces from the sale of an estate (known as “estate jewellery” in the US).

So, which period to go for? “Art Nouveau is in fashion,” says Raymond Sancroft-Baker, Christie’s’ senior European jewellery director, “but so is Art Deco and retro. Basically, every piece of quality jewellery made between 1900 and 1940 sells well.” Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia at Phillips recommends investing in a pair of Edwardian diamond chandelier earrings — “They’ll never go out of fashion,” he promises. What he’s basically saying is that good design will always transcend trends. For instance, an Art Deco piece by Cartier is as stylish now as it was when it was first made in the Twenties and Chanel’s original 1932 designs are constantly “reborn” for fine jewellery boutiques around the world.

However wonderful it is to own a piece by a name like Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Tiffany, Boucheron, Faberge or Bulgari, you will pay more for it. Auction houses do offer the most competitive prices — the http://gnet.org/relief-from-rosacea-curse-of-the-celts/ stores charge slightly more, due to the wide choice they keep in stock and the fact that they will always take a piece back should there be a problem. Otherwise, you get yourself a dealer. Humphrey Butler gives good jewellery talk and takes care of the legwork for clients looking for specific pieces. Discreet to a fault, no names cross his lips, but he has been spotted hotfooting it up and down Bond Street buying silver for the Queen. But a stylish vintage piece doesn’t have to be an antique from a traditional jeweller. When Edina Ronay wants to get into the vintage mood, she pins Forties paste brooches onto her jacket. Tamara Mellon of Jimmy Choo glitters with a range of Art Nouveau-style designs by Sasha Ratiu curled around the heels of her black satin stilettos. Picking up on the trend, Harrods has opened a flamboyant new department full of Forties and Fifties vintage costume jewellery by great names like Miriam Haskell, Trifari and Elsa Schiaparelli. There are also handmade pieces by “future collectibles” such as Carlo Zini and Rodrigo Otazu. Using a mixture of crystal and vintage beads, their contemporary creations, inspired by the great postwar designers, have been snapped up by Naomi Campbell and Britney Spears.

Angela Tassoni — a New York-based designer and the girlfriend of Joan Collins’ son, Sasha Newley has also spent years squirrelling away vintage finds. Using a global network of antique dealers, she’s tracked down an eclectic mix of pendants from the Twenties, fun Fifties brooches, old buttons and earrings — anything to use as the focus for her designs. “I love to use something that has history but make it look modern,” she says.

It’s no surprise to know that Joan Collins is a fan of these one-off pieces, but so are Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani. My own Tassoni necklace is always remarked upon because no-one can tell whether it’s vintage or modern, such is its mysterious elegance.

If you can’t borrow from Bulgari or raid the vaults at-Cartier as the s s do, we tell you how to get that crucial vintage-jewellery fix

            There’s been a seismic shift in the LA jewellery scene, as defining as the San Andreas Fault. Those West Coast favourites, the big dollar-draining, carat-soaked rocks are out of fashion. You know the kind — diamond icebergs that we would all love to flash for an evening and to hell with looking vulgar. Celebrities are deep in conversation with discreetly suited gentlemen visiting from Bond Street with trays of fabulous belle époque and Art Deco jewellery. It’s now a case of whispering, Marilyn style, “Talk tome, S.J. Phillips” — instead of Harry Winston — “tell me all about it”. How unusual for Tinseltown.

In Hollywood’s heyday, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner and Merle Oberon amassed famous jewellery collections. Not only were they showered with nineteenth-century baubles by wealthy suitors, but they also bought pieces themselves. Owning sparkling boxes full of spectacular jewellery was simply part of the screen goddess’ job. But for years, with the exception of those evergreen diamond addicts Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins, most actresses have appeared wearing modern jewels on loan.

Borrowing now requires a raid on the museum collections of S.J. Phillips if you want a pair of Georgian rose-diamond drop earrings for an event — as Cate Blanchett did for the premiere of Charlotte Gray. Sarah Jessica Parker wore a cameo strung on pearls to the Golden Globes. It’s hello to history.

Actresses are on the look-out for unique items with an interesting past and are buying jewellery that demonstrates a knowledge of their favourite period designer. Cate Blanchett favours Fortunato Pio Castellani, a nineteenth-century archaeologically inspired goldsmith; Barbra Streisand owns a Faberge diamond necklace; Whoopi Goldberg loves Art Nouveau; and Kate Capshaw collects good-quality belle époque pieces.

In recognition of the current taste for antique pieces, Sotheby’s has opened its Salon Privé in New York, an in-house shop for clients who crave jewellery between auctions. Such is the demand, they have 35 gemologists cranberry juice there sourcing stones and unusual jewellery. “If a client loses a bid on a Buccellati bracelet, for example,” says Carlton Rochell, the auction house’s international head of jewellery, “she can come to the salon and we’ll try to find a similar one.”

“The word ‘vintage’ is on the tip of everyone’s tongues,” says Anne Choate, director of Cartier Tradition, which sources original Cartier pieces for clients. The current favourites are Mogul-style fruit-salad pieces. Better known as “Tutti Frutti”, they were made in the Thirties from carved emerald leaves and sapphire and ruby berries. Geoffrey Munn, managing director of jeweller Wartski, observes that the trend for vintage has gone mad: “It’s echoing the retrospection of haute couture.” Indeed, enter the hallowed Parisian fitting rooms of Christian Dior and Givenchy, and you’ll find the latest auction catalogue of fine jewels from Phillips, discreetly placed there on the assumption that your new frock will require some appropriately splendid jewellery.

It’s the same story in London. The Bond Street jeweller Tessier, which provided the period sparklers for the film Gosford Park, has noticed a huge shift in jewellery-buying confidence in the last six months. Trudie Styler has a beautiful early twentieth-century emerald bead necklace and Kate Moss swings eighteenth-century baskets of diamond flowers from her ears. “It reminds me of my French haute-bourgeoisie roots,” says Jenny Hall of her eighteenth-century French ruby and diamond gold-fluted ring, which was passed down to her by her mother, Leslie “Gigi” Caron. “I wear it in a sporty, bolshy Anglo-French way,” she says, “and it makes me feel complete.”