Compact beauty cases - which double as jewellery - take us back to the roaring '20s
Vanity "bags" were created by all the major jewellery houses - including Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Boucheron, Chaumet, Asprey and Graff - as accessories for their fashion clientele, with status as paramount
It's film festival season again, and Hollywood starlets are sparkling all the more brightly as they mince down the red carpet toting gem-studded accessories. What these celebrities may not know, however, is that their tiny, precious purses - often too small to hold anything bulkier than a lipstick and possibly a phone - actually pay tribute to the early days of cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, when a unique vanity case was the A-list accoutrement, whether at the side of social luminaries, fashion leaders or stars of the stage and screen.
"The fabulous minaudières were probably the most refined and imaginative of all aesthetic products of the age of art deco," says arts journalist and editor Meredith Etherington-Smith. "[They reflect], in miniature, all the major art and fashion trends of the time, and [provide] a fascinating glimpse into the luxurious golden era of human beauty and adornment. They are the triumph of the jewellers' art - stunningly decorative on the outside and with interiors that were miniature feats of engineering."
Etherington-Smith was tasked with curating the summer exhibition "Ultra Vanities - Bejewelled Make-up Boxes from an Age of Glamour" at London's Goldsmith's Hall, for which she wrote an associated book, . The exhibition runs from May 31 to July 20, and the principal first floor rooms of the Goldsmith's Hall will be transformed into an elegant early 20th-century Parisian salon. Guerlain's signature Shalimar perfume will add fragrance to the space.
The showcase will bring a collector's treasures out into the light, featuring more than 200 gold, silver and platinum examples from one collection of minaudières and nécessaires (or compacts as they are sometimes referred to) - finely wrought, jewelled and enamelled boxes that were all the rage of the well-heeled from the 1920s through the 1950s. There will also be a few single compacts, lipstick holders and gold lamé evening bags and pouches on view.
The private male Asian collector who owns the items partly attributes his decades-long attraction to what they encapsulate in terms of history and social context.
The first, smaller nécessaires (or "essential accessories"), which predate the rectangular minaudière, are decorative cylindrical receptacles for everyday grooming items. They are sometimes referred to as étuis and were first used in the 1720s and often carried on a chatelaine - a hook from which many chains were hung with personal items, worn at the waist or pinned to dresses or clothing.
The minaudière, on the other hand, was first invented and patented in 1933 by Van Cleef & Arpels, and the story goes that the first model was designed for an American railway magnate's wife, Florence Gould, who had a habit of transporting her make-up, comb, cigarettes and lighter in a box.
"At the time, [the minaudière] was the improvement of the nécessaire that already existed in the 1920s and whose interior was composed of two compartments, one for powder and the other for pills, coins and the like," says Catherine Cariou, heritage director of Van Cleef & Arpels. "The minaudières brought many technical advances to [this] vanity case." In the following decades, Americans displayed a particular fondness for the concept's streamlined chic. The minaudières also prove that looks can be deceiving - these small-scale marvels contain all manners of small accessories. Cariou elaborates: "The modern woman had started using make-up during the war and needed a small, unobtrusive bag to capture infinite femininity and all the must-have accessories in one minuscule object.