If you`ve been watching the trends out there in Jewelry Land, you`ve seen antique watch faces, wire mesh, plastic toys and glass eyeballs all appropriated in the name of fashion. You`ve noticed the sizzling summer colors applied to earrings, bracelets and brooches. You`ve beheld the ascendancy of silver over gold.
But here`s something you might have overlooked: tool jewelry. Hardware has infiltrated the fashion world, from highfalutin` goldsmiths to more humble manufacturers, all of whom are finding inspiration in such commonplace implements as ladders, saws, hammers and axes.
Why tools, you may ask? ”I have no idea,” says Frank Onis, hand-tool department merchandiser for the Ace Hardware chain. ”To be honest with you, I`ve never seen anything like this, except for some Christmas ornaments and novelty items. But I guess you can package anything so that it looks good, and I suppose jewelry that looks like tools is perfect for the person who has everything.”
For avant-garde designer Yohji Yamamoto, a line of pliers and nut and bolt pins for his spring menswear collection simply complemented a mood. ”All his clothes had an outdoorsman, lumberjack theme, so the tool accessories were just part of a motif,” explains June Blaker, co-owner of City, 361 W. Chestnut St. ”But women are buying them more than men. They`re responding to the design, look and shape of the piece more than the fact that it`s a tool.” The same might be true of Sandra Enterline`s finely crafted, patinaed silver ladder brooch and Sarah Brown`s gleaming silver necklace and pin, which incorporate a variety of implements. But a pair of tiny garden-trowel earrings can hardly be construed as art. They`re just pure-if eccentric-fun.
And as for the next peculiar blip on the fashion radar screen, rev up those engines: We`ve already seen at least one car-radiator pin. –
