Hollywood’s love affair with diamonds has been a well-documented one, from Dynasty’s Crystal Carrington to Elizabeth Taylor’s jaw-dropping jewelry. Elizabeth’s pear-shaped 69-carat diamond ring by Harry Winston was an engagement present from Richard Burton, which was then made into a necklace because she decided it was too big for a ring. Dubbed the Taylor-Burton diamond, it was photographed and splashed across the pages of tabloids nestled against Elizabeth’s still charming décolleté.
But nothing says it better than Marilyn Monroe’s breathy song-and-dance number, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, which spawned two inspired versions: Madonna’s Material Girl with a video that is a direct homage to Marilyn’s pink boudoir set and outfit – a song which Madonna claimed was the only one she ever regretted in her career – and Nicole Kidman’s Diamond Dogs Bollywood version in Moulin Rouge, which took all the gloss and pop out of the original song.
While old-school stars have been peddling their carat-heavy jewelry to the red-carpet press, young Hollywood’s been going in a whole other direction. If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, then crystals are her more worldly, more sophisticated older sister. Diamonds have retained their panache throughout the years as an older woman’s plaything, while crystals were an accessory that only the young and chic could get away with.
Coco Chanel’s call to fashionable women declared that costume jewelry, the gaudier the better, was far more chic than the real thing. Large diamonds were gauche, the designer would scoff. The real thing was for old, uptight matrons. "Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty," Chanel once said. "It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity." To play with faux jewels, to deck your outfit with strands of the stuff said you were smart, modern and young.
The rest of the world soon followed suit. Designers were quick to absorb crystals into the fashion zeitgeist and made the material part of their rhetoric. Spawning the ‘60s mod-futuristic look, Paco Rabanne created dresses made of industrial materials like metal, plastic and, yes, even crystals, causing Coco Chanel to observe dryly that he was "not so much a couturier as a metal worker." Jane Fonda’s ingenious costumes in the campy hit Barbarella were just another of Paco Rabanne’s spage age-themed projects, making Jane Fonda’s alter ego a kind of cult icon in her sparkly body suits, capes and go-go boots.
Punk designer Zandra Rhodes, Betsey Johnson’s doppelganger in design sensibility, made crystals her own in the ‘70s with jeweled safety pin details – a trick that inspired Versace in the ‘90s – and softly draped jersey that was ripped and awkwardly seamed then embellished with crystals. Today’s biggest names in the fashion industry, from Versace to Alexander McQueen, have all made crystal the accessory du jour.
Though superstars like J.Lo may still glob on the jewels, young Hollywood’s elite have been taking a subtler route when it comes to their glitter. Though J.Lo did have a brief fling with the sparkly stuff in her Waiting for Tonight video – there's an eerie close-up shot of her face covered in crystals – the rest of the glitterati have been dazzling the public with these flashy baubles. Beyonce launched her solo career with her Dangerously in Love album cover with a photo of her in a crystal-webbed blouse. One of Britney’s outfits from her Toxic video was made of crystal, hose and not much else – and had many a young buck leaning closer to the TV screen to see if she was wearing anything else.
The world’s love for glitter continues until today – despite Mariah Carey’s flop of a movie – with stylish celebs littering the red carpet decked out in crystals. This year’s Oscars saw Beyonce perform the Phantom of the Opera theme song in an extravagant jewelry suite, worn by Minnie Driver in the film, from Swarovski’s Heritage Collection. Sideways star Sandra Oh couldn’t resist a little crystal meth with a Swarovski crystal-studded clutch. Even local designers Mel Vergel de Dios, Avel Bacudio and Mitzi Quillendrino-Bustos have added crystal into their arsenal of material, making us think, to paraphrase Marilyn, that diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but crystals are quite continental.