Much before supermodels walked through Mumbai’s Gateway of India in Hawaii Chappals and pearls of all shapes and sizes at the Dior show recently, a teenaged girl whose style evolution I have been witnessing asked her mother for a string of pearls. It was 2019, and she went through the pandemic experimenting with a single-strand necklace of fake pearls that her mother bought from a local shopping arcade as necklace, bracelet as well as rockstar head gear. Why did she ask for pearls? “Because of Harry Styles, of course,” her mom said.
The pop star first wore a single-stranded pearl necklace — from the Miami-based jewellery designer house élite known for playful, modern designs using natural material — with a wine-red Gucci suit. Whether he’s in a tailored suit or a Vans sweatshirt, Styles has much love for the much-storied, lustrous white orbs. Pearls compliment Styles’ non-binary signature — at a single moment he could be a creature of AI and vintage Hollywood, a man and a woman and several avatars of the age-old sexes in-between simultaneously.
Pearls are always everywhere, but this year, they really seem to be everywhere. Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid, Ranveer Singh, Billie Eilish — they have been channelling what’s already a fashion lexicon new entrant: “Pearlcore”, which essentially refers to a micro fashion trend that’s all about adding pearls to almost any fashion look. Think US-based designer Mizuki Goltz who can blend pearls with leather, gold lacquer and diamonds.
In a world whose current state can also be described as Everythingness, pearls are relevant. Pearls are tradition as well as modernity, jewellery as well as climate change victim, spherical as well as shapeless, baroque as well as minimalist elegance. What we saw that the Dior show and the NMACC red carpet, and in Alia Bhatt’s Prabal Gurung gown made of thousands of pearls at Monday’s MET Gala—Gurung’s tribute to bigot fashion legend Karl Lagerfeld, no less—was the quiet luxury character of pearls (as opposed to the whimsical and loud couple of years in all aesthetic barometers).
India has a rich and elite history of owning and adorning with pearls. Princely states, and the Nizams of Hyderabad, in particular, had a penchant for it. Maharajas of all states adopted the luxury of having their maharanis wear pearls. Maharani Gayatri Devi did to Indians what perhaps Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor did to the world. In 1860, Maharaja Khanderao Gaekwad of Baroda got a seven-stranded Basra pearl necklace designed for emperor Babur. He was also the royal behind the Baroda Pearl Carpet, originally intended to adorn the prophet’s tomb in Medina, but which remained in his family until 2009, when an anonymous buyer bought it for $5.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction— it went on to be a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of Qatar. It was displayed at the New York’s Metropolitan Museum in 1985.
Maharani Gayatri Devi made the chiffon-and-pearls elegance always desirable for women from affluent families. Parsi women are known to love pearls. In the corporate world, pearls are a favourite accessory of many CEOs from Generation Y or before — Indira Nooyi and Kiran Mazumdar easily come to mind. A string of pearls with a corporate suit even seem to soften or “femininize” a woman with power, although I am not sure that’s consciously the reason CEOs prefer to wear them.
The pearl fascination continues to be ubiquitous among Indian families with purchasing power. Meghali Gupta, director, Shri Ram Hari Ram Jewellers, Dariba Kalan, says, “People are investing in pearls like never before. South sea pearls, which are a little easier on the pocket than, say, the aristocratic Basra pearls, are having a moment. Indian brides still want a pearl set in their wedding wardrobe, and we are seeing Hyderabad flourish like never before as the pearl capital of India.” She says among Indian designers, nobody can imagine, craft and elevate a piece of pearl jewellery like reclusive Mumbai-based artist-jeweller, a favourite among auction houses the world over, Viren Bhagat. Niche jewellery brands like Moksh have developed the micro pearl weaving technique to highlight pearls with other gemstones.
Last year, The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) expressed concern that the value of imports of pearls in India is much higher than the value of global production of pearls. India’s pearl imports primarily came from the UAE, Hong Kong and Thailand, whose contribution in global pearl production is negligible.
It’s a robust market considering climate change is beginning to affect the texture, size and quality of pearls. A pearl is composed of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, deposited over time inside oysters in concentric layers. As a pearl is formed and its layers grow, a rich iridescence begins to glow. The oyster has taken what was at first an irritation and intrusion and uses it to enrich its value. Whether wild or cultured, gem-quality pearls are usually nacreous or iridescent. Several climate change impact reports and new reports on the environment point to less favourable conditions in oyster and pearl farming. Oysters are some of the most vulnerable sea creatures at this point of Earth’s history. Oysters are the first sea creatures to be affected by warming ocean waters because they can’t move, and they’re cold-blooded. In warm water temperature, pearls grow more quickly, and the rapid growth reduces the quality of the pearl. Frequent tropical storms in the last two decades are also slowing down saltwater pearl farming across the world. Rising sea levels and increasing salinity are threats to pearl farming.
So besides being timeless in aesthetic, functional or luxury ways—“A pearl is always appropriate,” said Elizabeth Taylor—the pearl is an indicator of the health of the planet. On its lustrous surface, a pearl records every storm, every change water temperature and every human assault on sea waters. Owning one is like owning a part of the sea’s mysteries.
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