Why pearls are a girl's ultimate best friend
This eternally alluring gem, which is enjoying a surge in popularity and price, has a rich cultural and historical significance. Pearls are now preferred to diamonds –
As a pearl aficionada, I can’t say I’m surprised at this resurgence in popularity. Quite apart from their flattering effect on the complexion and their go-with-anything charm, one only has to think of their history, their glamour, their mystique, their beauty, and the extraordinary way they can draw attention to a facet of the persona. Nothing could have been as economical and effective a way of displaying unbounded wealth as Cleopatra dissolving her pearl earring in a glass of vinegar. We, of course, tend to associate pearls with the Season, that ritual of the well-born that launched young women into adulthood and, with luck, towards a suitable husband. Then, a string of pearls was a father’s traditional present to his daughter to mark her 18th birthday – pearls that would be seen around every throat rising from the traditional white dress of the debutante.
For a long time, then, pearls were thought of as a badge of respectability, almost of authority – think Mrs Thatcher, think Michelle Obama – rather than the exotic and fascinating jewels that they are.
But far from being the province of the ingénue, or of the elderly maiden aunt or sensible matron, pearls have moved on – or perhaps I should say moved back to what they once were. Women like Sarah Jessica Parker prize them, as do Mariah Carey, Rita Ora and Rihanna. Pearls can ooze sophistication. Who can forget Princess Diana’s multi-strand pearl choker, with huge sapphire clasp worn above a decolletée black dress, or Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly and her ensemble of streaky blonde hair, dark glasses and pearl earrings? Or the words of Dorothy Parker: “When I’m cold I just put another rope of pearls on.”
Russian Grand Dukes swathed their opera singer mistresses in pearls, Belle Epoque courtesans evaluated their lovers by the length and lustre of the ropes of pearls with which they adorned them. Women in the Twenties and Thirties wore long strings of them, some, like Coco Chanel, even with their bathing dresses.
Pearls for the sirens of the film world spelt something else again – not a tally of the economic and romantic status of their lovers but a symbol of their sexual appeal. Women such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe used them almost as an extension of their earthy, sensual allure. Taylor’s famous “La Peregrina” pearl was given to her as a Valentine’s gift by her husband Richard Burton, its own dramatic history – which spans almost 500 years, having belonged to various queens of Europe – rivalling that of the Burtons’ tempestuous relationship. At one point Taylor lost it (“I went into the bedroom, buried my head in the pillow, and screamed”) only to find her puppy chewing on it.
Historically, of course, pearls have always been prized. The Romans loved them, and in medieval Europe they were signifiers of authority on royal regalia, symbolising purity and chastity, though by the Renaissance they had become largely ornamental – adornments that nevertheless showed you were a person of wealth and consequence.
For the imaginative, pearls can be a metaphor – for the changing of an irritant into a thing of beauty and, by extension, how to turn a misfortune into something beneficent. Formed when a scrap of grit, a parasite, a bit of broken shell, enters an unwary oyster’s shell, the final, exquisite, gleaming pearl is the result of layer upon layer of a substance known as nacre, secreted by the oyster and wrapped round the foreign body to prevent further damage to the oyster’s soft tissues.
The reason for the lustre and iridescence that are a (real) pearl’s distinguishing features is the reflection of light through these layers, all of them translucent. It reflects – the best pearls are almost mirror-like – but you cannot, as you can with a diamond, ruby or sapphire, gaze into its depths.
Nor can you cut it and shape it as you can with other gems. A pearl is sui generis – a treasure grown inside a living creature that comes from the sea rather than being mined from the land. As searching for it in the wild is such a hit-and-miss business – literally hundreds of oysters have to be opened before one is found with a pearl – pearls have always been expensive, so much so that the 20th century saw the emergence of the cultured pearl – a pearl into which an irritant was artificially introduced. The first commercial crop came in 1928.
Again unlike other jewels a pearl is still a “living” organism. That is to say, the layers of nacre of which a pearl is composed are absorbent, so that external factors can influence their condition and even colour. Thus they improve with wear, picking up faint traces of oil from your skin that gives them an added gleam – so rub them with a soft chamois leather rather than wash them. Their absorbency also means that make-up can stain them, while chemicals, such as perfume or hairspray, can damage them. In fact, in my eyes, the only downside of these beautiful objects is that you can’t wear scent with them.
My own favourites are a single strand which I  wear with pearl studs, given to me by my husband. They travel with me wherever I go. I can wear them with anything and am convinced they bring me luck. What more can you want from a necklace than that?