Diana, Princess of Wales
Her real innovation was not any single piece. It was refusing to keep formal jewellery for formal occasions.
The signature: Formal jewellery worn against informal clothes
Diana had access to some of the most formal jewellery in existence and the thing she is actually remembered for, in accessory terms, is wearing it in the wrong contexts on purpose. Pearls with sportswear. A choker with a sweatshirt. Serious earrings above a blazer at a school event. That mismatch was the innovation, and it looks entirely normal now precisely because she did it.
Pearls were her most-repeated material, including several chokers — one triple-strand choker was a family gift for her eighteenth birthday, and she returned to that shape throughout her life. The choker matters as a shape because it sits high and close, which is the opposite of the long formal necklace it replaced, and it works with an open collar or bare neck rather than requiring a gown.
What makes her genuinely instructive rather than simply photographed is the consistency of the mismatch. It was not occasional. Over fifteen years she repeatedly took the most formal category of accessory available and put it against the least formal clothes in her wardrobe, and the result is the template a great deal of current styling still runs on.
The site's own advice to wear pearls with denim is, in a direct line, hers.
What transfers
Formality lives in the pairing, not in the object. A formal piece against casual clothes reads as confidence; the same piece with a matching formal outfit reads as an occasion you are dressed for. If your good jewellery only comes out for events, you are getting a fraction of it.
