The Year Jewelry Got Bigger, Bolder and Silver

"Record-high gold prices and a fatigue with so-called quiet luxury set the stage for a resurgence of statement silver pieces.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Robert Lee Morris’s sculptural silver earrings, breastplates and cuffs earned him certain trappings of fashion stardom: a yearslong collaboration with Donna Karan, a friendship with Karl Lagerfeld, exporting his namesake jewelry brand to Japan.

Mr. Morris’s Artwear store, known for its museum-like approach to displaying statement jewelry, became a destination in SoHo well before the Manhattan neighborhood turned into an open-air mall. The store, which closed in 1995, helped cement his reputation as a designer known for preferring size over subtlety and for bringing new attention to silver (and by extension sterling silver, an alloy).

As the price of gold has soared to all-time highs — peaking at about $2,800 an ounce in late October before falling to its current price, about $2,600 an ounce — Mr. Morris’s preferred medium of silver, which currently costs about $30 an ounce, has been sought out by a growing number of jewelers.

Many have used the metal to produce hefty and intricate pieces that would be cost prohibitive if made in gold, fueling a shift away from delicate demi-fine baubles and toward sizable jewelry — the kind made by Mr. Morris and other established designers known for working with silver, like Ted Muehling, Gabriella Kiss and Judy Geib.

Earrings and Necklaces

“You can’t afford to buy gold but you can afford to buy silver,” Mr. Morris said, adding that there has recently been an uptick in demand for his chunky pieces. He attributed the renewed interest to the “tremendous amount of energy in the world,” as he put it.

“The world is in a very high level of activity and that wakes people up and keeps people on the edge of their seat,” said Mr. Morris, 77, whose silver necklaces cost between hundreds of dollars (for pendants) and thousands (for bibs of Gobstopper-size balls). “People want to buy things in this period of sadness and fear, and they want a big silver cuff.”

Bulky cuffs are but one of countless options to buy these days. J. Hannah, a label in Los Angeles, offers classic charm necklaces and signet rings. Mondo Mondo, another brand in the city, is known for quirkier styles embedded with colorful stones. Sophie Buhai, who also designs jewelry in Los Angeles, makes silver barrettes as well as necklaces with pendants shaped like eggs and vases, some of which recall the modernist silver designs by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Company.

Leo Costelloe, an artist in London, crafts silver into pieces resembling ribbon bows and crowns. The jewelers Charlotte Chesnais, in Paris, and Juju Vera, in New York, both design with an eye for curvature and exaggerated proportion. Items from Quarry, another label in New York, are distinguished by their bulbous shapes, while those from Agmes and Sapir Bachar, two more New York brands, are known for their clean lines.

Emily Dawn Long, a designer in Manhattan who releases small collections of clothing and accessories — the rapper Kendrick Lamar is a fan of her knit hats — recently introduced a line of silver jewelry manufactured by artisans in Indonesia. Ms. Dawn Long, 34, said the price of silver made the metal an obvious choice for her cowrie-shell bracelets and cuff links because “money is so unfreeing for an artist.”

The net price of gold has continued to climb in recent years because of several factors, said Eric Gozenput, the chief executive of Bullion Exchanges, a company in Manhattan that sells precious metals. Those reasons include the Covid pandemic, wars in Europe and the Middle East and economic competition between the United States and China.

The resulting shift to silver is not only influencing fashion trends, but cultures in which buying gold jewelry is a deeply rooted tradition. “In India, where gold has primarily been the option of choice, people are now moving toward silver,” Mr. Gozenput said.

Sales of silver items at Completedworks, a small jewelry brand in London, jumped this year compared with in 2023, said its founder, Anna Jewsbury. The metal’s lower cost allows jewelers and consumers to “prioritize design and creativity,” she said. “Jewelry is a mini sculpture and silver allows you to lean into that.”

At Love Adorned, a jewelry boutique known for its selection of independent brands and vintage pieces, the interest in silver items has been driven as much by changing tastes as it has been by economic trends. “Clients who have bought a lot of gold from us, who have the means to buy big amounts of gold, are now buying silver — it’s the look,” said Lori Leven, the owner of Love Adorned, which has locations in Manhattan and on Long Island.

Rings and Bracelets

Stéphanie Roger, the owner of Whitebird, a jewelry boutique that sells many brands, described a similar demand among customers of her three stores in Paris. So did the jeweler Kendra Scott, whose namesake brand has some 130 stores in the United States. “We are seeing silver sell at much higher rates than we have in the past; people want silver or even silvertone jewelry,” said Ms. Scott, who recently introduced a Western-themed collection, Yellow Rose, full of silvery pieces.

Ms. Scott said her company’s sales of silver items in 2024 spiked compared with last year’s output, adding that interest in silver has coincided with preferences shifting from small jewelry toward pieces with significant proportions.

The shift toward maximalist jewelry is a reaction to the minimalist trend known as quiet luxury, said Thom Bettridge, the editor of i-D magazine. “The quieter sensibility creates more room for jewelry and accessorizing and creating a sense of abundance through accessories,” he said.

At Old Jewelry, a boutique in Manhattan’s Chinatown that specializes in silver pieces, cases are filled with a mix of contemporary artist-made jewelry and wonderfully strange vintage designs, which exist in abundance because of the metal’s history as a medium for avant-garde artists, Indigenous makers and European aristocrats.

Many vintage pieces still exist because the value of silver jewelry has never made it worth melting down for cash, said Old Jewelry’s founder, Sarah Burns. “They call it the people’s metal, because it’s approachable for both the artist making the work and the consumer who wants to own a piece,” she added." [1]

1. The Year Jewelry Got Bigger, Bolder and Silver: All Consuming. Misty White Sidell.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Dec 19, 2024.