Strong muses

ART DECO arrived in the early 1910s and emerged as the premier decorative style of the world in the period between the two World Wars. It took over from the asymmetrical fluidity of the Art Nouveau movement, perhaps as a response to the noisier world that awaited it; the world that Art Nouveau created having been charred by the unprecedented horrors of the First World War.

The First World War eliminated many able-bodied men of a certain age and generation, and this dearth of men in the workplace enabled many women to seek work and find fame and fulfillment for themselves. In this setting, designers like Coco Chanel and Suzanne Belperron emerged from obscurity and carved out reputations that would last for generations. It is from these two women that fine jeweler and designer Paul Syjuco bases his latest collection, called Muse. Businessworld had a private viewing at his shop at the Peninsula Manila on Oct. 2, and a quick view of the pieces might deceive the buyer into a very simplistic analysis of his pieces: it is, at its core, a style retrospective of the 1930s, centering on Art Deco. However, despite the wealth of inspiration from the fabulous jewelers at the time, Mr. Syjuco took inspiration from just those two women, Chanel and Belperron. “There were the big jewelry houses, and they were sort of the rebels,” he said.

While

Chanel is a household name these days, and Coco Chanel in the 1930s wasn’t exactly struggling, but she had a lot to fight for still. She emerged from poverty as the mistress of wealthy men who got her a head start in the business. Suzanne Belperron, on the other hand, has a certain misfortune in being known only in rarefied circles. The jewelry designer worked for influential jewelers of the time, but due to the Second World War, had to close down her business. The Nazis found fault in the Jewish links to her business, and she herself was arrested. The story goes that Ms. Belperron swallowed her address book one page at a time to protect her business partners and clients.

Either way, the two women went against the prevailing style of the era dominated by men. While architecture and jewelry relied on masculine, geometrical shapes, the two women designed jewelry that was softer, feminine, and colored — in contrast to the stark black and white creations popularized by the big designers of the era. “They were women, and they understood women,” said Mr. Syjuco about his muses.

Mr. Syjuco thus took a page from their book and designed a collection centering on look and design, instead of concentrating on the size and shape of the stones. Executed in many semiprecious stones, the result is a soft and bold statement — maybe like Lauren Bacall’s throaty whisper if it was to be crystallized.

There are earrings in the shape of hibiscus flowers, made with five flat pearls each, clustered around a stamen of gold and diamonds. Matching sets of gold and diamond jewelry in the shape of snails were also on display, and one of the anchor pieces of the collection was a necklace of large malachite beads supporting a pendant of horn, mother-ofpearl, and diamonds. A final piece that caught our eye was a set of emerald jewelry, with a central stone surrounded by a hexagonal lapis lazuli inlay, punctuated with a pave halo of diamonds.

Style takes cues from society, and more often than not, what happens to the world can be seen on the dressed body. In the case of style retrospectives such as this, it’s usually because what has been said before has to be said again. Earlier this week, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, amid sexual harassment accusations. Mr. Syjuco said that his style retrospective of powerful women in the 1930s is only meant to be a statement against a homogenization in jewelry design. In the noise of #MeToo and several women standing up to several powerful figures, he still stresses a theme present in this collection: “Femininity, and the importance of women.” —