Miriam Haskell Makes a Comeback

In the 1920s, while Coco was designing her signature Chanel suit for fashion, and Clara Bow was enticing men with her pouting eyes in silent film, Miriam Haskell moved to New York City to open her first costume jewelry store, Le Bijou de L’Heure, in the McAlpin Hotel. Coco and Miriam became fast friends, choosing fine beads in Paris for Haskell’s bracelets and brooches that would go with Coco’s designs.

Haskell, who herself was more into discovering new fashion trends than what earrings went with what necklace, took her talent for designing handmade costume jewelry to the next level, and put it into the hands of those to see and be seen with—Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, and the Duchess of Windsor. As Haskell moved forward in her business, the demons of mental illness took over, which ultimately led to her death in 1981 and the subsequent sale of her business—three different times—over the next forty years.

Chief designer, Camille (Millie) Petronzio, along with the company’s new owner, Frank Fialkoff and his daughter, Gabrielle Fialkoff Redford, the company’s COO, have recently launched a revitalization of Haskell’s signature line. Under Gabrielle’s direction, who was the former Finance Director for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the company has grown from $10 million to $90 million in just six years.

I went to Jest Jewels, a jewelry boutique in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow neighborhood, to see what giving a new life to a costume jewelry line might look like. Memories came to me of dipping into my mother’s red velvet jewelry box as a little girl, clipping on her gold earrings, and pinning her Victorian brooch, while the sales clerk laid Haskell’s newest designs on the counter before me. This is your mother’s and grandmother’s old fashioned costume jewelry, but it seems it has never gone out of fashion. Russian gold holds glass beads and seed pearls as filigrees, wrapping around the front as carefully as the back, where the Miriam Haskell stamp sits, letting a collector know she now has an original.

Each piece is handmade and can take as long as three days to make, and you can still witness Haskell’s inspiration from around the world in the use of berries, beans, stones, and leaves. The pieces I saw ranged from $100 (a gold charm bracelet) to $115 (seed pearl and Austrian crystal clip-ons in a floral bouquet shape) to $155 for a matching brooch in the shape of a sword, with dangling seed pearls.