Stone me, gems are SUCH a minefield
BARBARA AMIEL’S autobiography, friends And enemies, which was serialised by the Mail this week, is gripping on many levels. I particularly love her thoughtful despatches on jewellery, from the frontline of international bling.
As the wife of media tycoon Conrad Black, Barbara had an entrée into Manhattan society and the ladies who controlled it; Nancy Kissinger, Mercedes Bass, evelyn lauder and lily Safra, to name a few.
They were fantastically wealthy and liked to display their status with ostentatious gems.
Poor wee Barbara was practically a little Match Girl in comparison. Strike up the tiny violins!
However, I’ve always suspected that when you get to this stratosphere of wealth, it is more about the men who buy the jewels than the women who wear them. (Perhaps we should make an exception for Beyoncé in her million-dollar emerald earrings singing at the inauguration of Barack Obama — the perfect blend of international girl power; inspiration and aspiration in one gorgeous image.)
At parties it was always men who noticed and remarked bitchily on Barbara Amiel’s pauvre jewels. Once, when she was wearing a loaned diamond necklace, the billionaire Jacob rothschild sneered — correctly: ‘You’re wearing a tiara around your neck. rather large! Is it comfortable?’
later, the ‘King of Wall Street’ John Gutfreund told her that her emerald earrings were the wrong shade of green — they had too much oil in them. How hateful of these people! Yet after all her years of exposure to this ghastly gavotte of greed, Amiel concludes: ‘No matter how much you look into a gem stone, there isn’t really that much to see, even as you rhapsodise about its eternal flame or some such balderdash. It’s just status, adornment, wampum — a means to barter or transport wealth easily across borders.’
She’s so right. Don’t expect to see me in my ruby tiara ever again.