Spotlight on Brands with Interesting Designs Mid 1960s – 2000
With the escalating costs of the Classically Collectible Brands the goal of Chapter Three is to shine a “spotlight” on newer costume jewelry brands with quality designs and construction.
This Chapter shines the “spotlight” on selected brands with interesting designs. Detailed histories and brand qualities are included with multiple examples of jewelry for each brand.
The jewelry business in the first part of the 1960s continued to be dominated by the Classically Collectible Brands that were marketed through magazine advertisements and celebrity endorsements.
By the end of the 1960s, there was a dramatic shift in the costume jewelry business. Some of the original founders retired or died. Many of the families either decided to close the business or sell the brand. For example, in 1975 Trifari was sold to Hallmark. Then Hallmark was purchased by Crystal Brands Jewelry Corp. in 1988. It became part of the Monet group in 1994 and by 2000 it was part of the Liz Claiborne group. Trifari, as a brand, ceased to exist as the stand-alone company that created the Trifari designs collectors love. After the death of the founding Pennino Brothers, the family opted to destroy the original molds rather than sell them. Their goal was to protect the provenance and integrity of the Pennino designs and brand. (Information from an article by Dotty Stringfield titled Three Neapolitan Princes and the Legacy of Pennino published in the 15th anniversary edition of Vintage Fashion & Costume Jewelry, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2006, Publisher Lucille Tempesta.)
The Classically Collectible Brands remaining in business faced a huge shift in jewelry fashions. The youthful customers of the late 1960s no longer wanted the matching jewelry sets of the 1950s. They were not looking for the glitz of the mid 1960s. They were looking for jewelry that reflected their individuality, including hand-made designs and simpler styles.
A wonderful reference book on Napier jewelry titled The Napier Co. Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry by Melinda L. Lewis with Henry Swen discusses the changes in fashions.
From 1960s conservative fashion, to mod, Space Age, and psychedelic apparel, almost anything and everything was worn. The young consumers’ effect on style toward the end of the sixties ultimately influenced the couture houses. For the first time fashion evolved from the street up.
The market did not follow any one trend, and consumer’s had vast choices available, because of the rise in mass production and economic growth. The increased scope and depth of media played a large role in forging new concepts and ideas for fashions. Images in magazines, TV, and the press visually bombarded people.
Lewis, Melinda L., The Napier Co. Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry. Benicia, CA: Life by Design, 2013. P. 340.
Individual designers began starting their own brands. These designers became celebrities who marketed their brand through modern media and technology. For example, a young customer would not be wearing Trifari jewelry, he or she would be wearing Jonathan Bailey for Trifari jewelry.
In addition to the shift in media attention, the 1970s brought harsh economic changes to the traditional jewelry business in the United States. Labor unions and uneven tariff laws put the American manufacturers at a disadvantage in the global market. They could not compete with the cheaper, mass-produced jewelry entering the United States.
The demand for costume jewelry, regardless of the design or the quality, was diminished as the price of gold increased. The increasing value of the gold motivated customers to buy and wear chains. Gold chains were a status symbol. Customers went into fine jewelry stores to purchase gold chain, wound around huge spools, as an investment. They were hoping the value of gold would continue to rise.
Trifari tried to compete with this trend. The Trifari 1977 catalog contains pages and pages of chains and simple designs unadorned with stones made from chains. The days of bold, beautiful costume jewelry designs were, at least temporarily, gone.
In the 1980s, with the disco movement, bold costume jewelry designs were back in fashion. Television shows like Dynasty and The Golden Girls featured unabashedly huge faux earrings and glittery sequined fashions.
All these factors set the stage for a new way to sell fashions and jewelry. On November 24, 1986, QVC was launched by founder Joseph Segel. In the beginning QVC sold jewelry on television from 7:30 PM to midnight during the week and for 24 hours on the weekend.
By 1987 QVC broadcast their products on television 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 364 days of the year with Christmas day as the only holiday.
A wonderful article by Natalie Robehmed of the Forbes Staff titled “The Curious Case of Joan Rivers QVC Line” (www.forbes.com) provides interesting statistics of QVC’s product lines, including the dominance of jewelry sales over other products sold by QVC in the 1990s. Robehmed writes that in the 1990s QVC sold 6,000 different products. By 2014 they sold 1.2 million products. In 1990 QVC jewelry was 50% of their 453 million dollars in revenue. In 2015 jewelry was 12% of their 8.8 billion annual sales.
Department stores were some of the first brands to sell on QVC including Sears in 1987 and J.C. Penney in 1991. By 1996 QVC was also selling on the internet.
Despite the promising sales, celebrities like Joan Rivers did not immediately flock to QVC.
In those days, only dead celebrities went on [QVC],” Rivers said to the Staten Island Advance in 2004. “My career was over. I had bills to pay….It also intrigued me at the beginning…
We’ve done over a billion dollars worth of sales,” Rivers told Bloomberg in 2014. “We now do 27% through the Internet. They’re not even listening to me to say, ‘this is fabulous.’ They’re just going on there and finding it for themselves.”
Natalie Robehmed, Forbes Staff “The Curious Case of Joan Rivers QVC Line” (www.forbes.com)
Joan Rivers and Kathy Levine were a huge hit. Joan was a celebrity comedian and Kathy was one of the first hosts for QVC. Together they sold Joan’s jewelry while providing the viewer with a fun, funny, and informative program.
Soon other fashion and jewelry celebrities joined Rivers selling costume jewelry on QVC including Kenneth J. Lane, Nolan Miller, and Bob Macke.
What a treat for home viewers! Instead of merely watching celebrities wear Nolan Miller’s fashions on Dynasty, he was on QVC selling his jewelry line directly to the consumer in their home! With each appearance Nolan Miller presented a mini-fashion show. He routinely brought his couture dresses for the QVC models to wear while modeling his jewelry line. Like Joan Rivers, Nolan Miller put on a wonderful show!
At this time vintage jewelry collectors were still finding the Classically Collectible Brands in antique stores and flea markets, so many did not embrace the “new” costume jewelry designs marketed on QVC. It was thought to be mass produced and inferior to the older brands.
Today opinions about some of the early QVC jewelry lines are changing. Many of the early QVC brands produced jewelry with excellent designs and quality manufacturing. Some designs included 24K gold plating and expensive rhodium plating. Some designs were modern interpretations of classic costume and fine jewelry designs.
Many of the costume jewelry brands sold on QVC from the 1990s through the 2000s adhered to the same business principles found in successful Classically Collectible Brands:
- The founder has a passion for jewelry and jewelry design.
- Each brand exercised integrity in their business practices.
- Innovation was an integral part of their business model.
- The brand consistently produced distinctive, recognizable jewelry designs.
- The brand has a strong marketing plan tied to the everchanging fashion trends.
Some brands sold on QVC were collectible when they were first introduced. For example, Joan Rivers introduced egg charms based on her collection of authentic Fabergé eggs. She offered “new” egg charms on many of her appearances on QVC. Consumers quickly began to collect them.
Chapter Three focuses a “spotlight” on a selection of brands started in the mid 1960s – 2000. Each brand presented shares several of the traits found in the successful Classically Collectible Brands featured in Chapter Two. Also included is a sampling of jewelry for each spotlighted brand, with defined designed traits.