58 The Language of Fashion
very sign of its prestige and of its magical qualities: namely its highest
price; not only is jewellery that is too rich or too heavy now discredited
but conversely, for expensive jewellery to have good taste, its richness
must be discreet, sober, visible certainly but only to those in the know.
So what counts as good taste in jewellery today? Quite simply this:
no matter how little it costs, the piece of jewellery must be thought about
in relation to the whole outfit it accompanies, it must be subjected to
that essentially functional value which is that of style. What is new, if you
like, is that the piece of jewellery is no longer on its own; it is one term in
a set of links that goes from the body to clothing, to the accessory and
includes the circumstances for which the whole outfit is being worn;
it is part of an ensemble, and this ensemble is no longer necessarily
ceremonial: taste can be everywhere, at work, in the country, in the
morning, in winter, and the piece of jewellery follows suit; it is no longer
a singular, dazzling, magical object, conceived as a way of ornamenting
and thus making woman look her best; it is now more humble and more
active, an element of clothing which enters into an equal relationship
with a material, with a particular cut or with another accessory.
So it is precisely its smallness, its finished look, its very substance as
the opposite of the fluidity of fabrics, that makes the piece of jewellery
part of fashion and it has become almost like the soul in the general
economy of clothing: that is, the detail. It was inevitable that, in making
taste into the product of a subtle set of functions, fashion would give
more and more weight to the simple presence of one element, no matter
how small and without regard for its physical importance; this gives
rise to the highest value in today’s fashion being placed on anything
insignificant in size but which is able to modify, harmonize, animate the
structure of a set of clothes, and it is called precisely (but from now on
with a lot of respect) a next-to-nothing. The piece of jewellery is a next-
to-nothing, but out of this next-to-nothing comes great energy. often
inexpensive, sold in simple ‘boutiques’ and no longer in the temples
of jeweller’s shops, available in a variety of materials, free in its styles
(often including the exotic even), in short depreciated in the true sense
of the word, in its physical state, the most modest piece of jewellery
remains the vital element in getting dressed, because it underlines the
desire for order, for composition, for intelligence. analogous to those
half-chemical, half-magical, substances which act all the more forcefully
by virtue of their infinitesimal size, the piece of jewellery reigns over