Peaking now · Jewelry · Not seasonal · Mrs Accessories analysis by Maggi Ferguson

Pearls, but irregular and worn with denim

Uneven shapes, layered strands, no occasion required. Pearls have lost the formality.

The pearl necklace people picture — one strand, graduated, identical spheres, clasped at the back — is a specific mid-century object, and it is not what is being worn. The current version is deliberately irregular: baroque pearls with lumpy, asymmetric shapes, strands of mismatched sizes, several lengths worn at once, sometimes broken up with metal or beads.

What that irregularity buys is informality. A perfectly matched strand carries an occasion with it and looks slightly stranded without one. A lopsided baroque pearl on a leather cord does not, which is why the pieces being shown turn up with knitwear, shirting and denim rather than with anything you would call an outfit.

Real pearls are not required and, at these shapes, barely relevant — baroque freshwater pearls are inexpensive, and good glass or resin imitations are hard to distinguish once the shapes are uneven anyway. The tell on a cheap pearl is not the pearl, it is the drilling and the knotting: gaps around the hole, or a strand with no knots between the beads, which will scatter the lot the first time it catches.

One genuine care note, because pearls are the one material on this site that is chemically fragile. Perfume, hairspray and the acid in sweat all etch the surface permanently. Pearls go on last, after fragrance, and get wiped with a soft cloth before they go away. Imitation pearls are worse, not better — the coating lifts.

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