How To Find Your Jewellery Tribe: The Celeb-Approved Gems To Know About Now

The old adage goes that you can tell a woman’s taste by her handbag or shoes. What’s more revealing now is what hangs from her earlobes or wraps around her wrists. Jewellery has become one of fashion’s biggest signifiers of what tribe you belong to, and the category’s renaissance is being led by a wave of women who come with a dedicated cult following. Which one will you identify with?

The classicist: Jessica McCormack

The Kiwi jeweller, famous for antique- inspired diamonds, has a fan club that includes stateswomen (Jacinda Ardern), fashion power players (Victoria Beckham) and royalty (Meghan Markle). The latter wears Jessica’s Tattoo Pendant (its swirl shape takes inspiration from traditional Maori art) and Gypset earrings on repeat. ‘They’re not for wearing once every three years,’ says Jessica, listing holidays, hikes, boardrooms, school runs, black-tie parties and weddings as appropriate occasions. ‘They should be used, loved, cherished and eventually passed down.’ An internship at Sotheby’s, where she learned about the Russian crown jewels, as well as heritage jewellers such as Cartier and Lalique, sparked her interest in jewellery-making. Her father’s antique dealing also played a part: ‘He’d come back with boxes of broken costume jewellery.’ Jessica prides herself on creating modern work. ‘You don’t feel like you’re wearing a twin-set and pearls or your mother’s diamond,’ she says. NH

The maximalist: Carolina Bucci

Fine jeweller Carolina Bucci itemises the pieces she’s wearing, including the watch she designed with Audemars Piguet, a bow-shaped ring and five strands of beads and links around her neck. ‘I don’t do dainty layering,’ she laughs, ‘but I’m wearing jeans, a cashmere sweater and sneakers so it’s very relaxed.’ There’s an Italian word for this approach – sprezzatura – that Carolina lives by. ‘It means the art of effortlessness.’ The craft of jewellery-making is in Carolina’s DNA. It originated with her great-grandfather in 1885. ‘He used to repair pocket watches and started making bespoke chains for his clients.’ She’s based in London, but her ateliers are in Florence. The city is at the heart of the brand. The house signatures include the practice of using Renaissance-era looms to make the 18ct gold threads in her Woven collection as well as the Florentine Finish that makes her pieces sparkle like they’re covered in diamonds. NH

The aesthete: Monica Vinader

Monica Vinader’s inspiration is a catalogue of anthropological artefacts, sculpture, architecture and landscapes. ‘I’m always sketching, and my bag is full of pencils and pens,’ she says over the phone from New York, where she plans to squeeze in a trip to the Edmund de Waal ceramics exhibition at The Frick Collection. Her references might be artistic, but her pieces are down-to-earth and designed to be played with. Her signatures include semi-precious gemstones, like the Duchess of Cambridge’s green onyx Siren earrings. Monica is also known for her cord friendship bracelets and her personalisation services, from engraving, to the Alta Capture earrings that can have extra links and charms added to the ends. She cites her mother’s Art Deco and 1940s jewellery as her first introduction to the craft. ‘She was generous, letting me wear her jewellery, and I got a real appreciation for the joy of something that’s well made.' NH

The collector: Alighieri

When Rosh Mahtani wants to mark an accomplishment, she celebrates by buying another copy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Testament to the tearaway success of the brand she founded in 2014, Alighieri – a love letter to the 14th-century Italian poet – the Oxford graduate’s Hatton Garden studio is now stuffed with a sprawling range of editions. Rosh describes Alighieri’s medallions and trinkets, irregularly finished as if excavated from Roman ruins, as ‘heirlooms, but told in a modern way. I like things to feel like they’ve been dug up from the earth, as if they’ve already lived a life and are with the customer on the next part of their journey’. To Rosh, who has ‘this crazy emotional response’ to jewellery, it’s more than decorative, ‘it’s a talismanic way of passing things on from generation to generation’. Her fans are linked by a cerebral, poetic sensibility. ‘They’re adventurous and want to tell a story with what they’re wearing. They love the meaning behind the pieces.’ LAJ