This season has seen a convergence of two very unlikely trends: punk and pearls. When you think of punk, you imagine Vivienne Westwood, bondage trousers, leather jackets, sex, anarchy and mohawks. Whereas pearls have a demure sheen of purity and restraint. For almost a century Country Life had a portrait of a young woman smiling sedately with a string of pearls around her neck on the cover. Favoured by the Queen and Jackie O, they are respectable, but perhaps a little uninteresting. However, change is in the air. This season, pearls have been reimagined in line with a punk aesthetic. A renunciation of their stuffiness, this is a reinvention and reclamation of the gemstone. Punk has always been as much of a fashion as a political statement: reimagining the everyday to create a multiplicity of meaning.

Even something as commonplace as safety pins have a rich cultural and historical significance. They are functional and yet simultaneously subversive and even sexy. Loren Stewart has made a series of delicate safety pin earrings which incorporate pearls: mixing luxury with utilitarianism.



Delfina Deletrez has made a series of pieces which integrate gold, pearls and diamonds. This jewellery reimagines the shapes and design of body jewellery, bar bells and hoops. They are luxe, a bit louche, and most definitely punk.



Make like Walter Raleigh with these drop pearl earrings. Nadia Shelbaya's single baroque one studded with gold is especially good. 

There are ear cuffs, studs, hoops and rings to be worn mismatched, layered and with asymmetric abandon.

InThe Natural History Pliny tells of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in vinegar and nonchalantly drinking it. That is punk.

Tags: Pearls , Punk