When the rock ’n’ roll jeweler Stephen Webster was designing his new London flagship, he decided there was only one motif strong enough for one of its walls: a fish. So a backlit stained-glass window of a Japanese fighting fish will dominate the No Regrets bar at the four-level space, scheduled to open in May at the 19th-century Burlington Arcade.
He certainly has tapped into the motif of the season: Fish jewelry, which has been landing at stores and online sites, was in the spotlight last fall at many of the spring shows.
At the Schiaparelli show, Daniel Roseberry went for drama with a single long gilded brass earring in the shape of a fish skeleton, its tail encircling a pearl ($3,300 for a pair). At Roberto Cavalli, Fausto Puglisi sent out a brass swordfish pendant dangling from a chunky aluminum chain (price on application). And in his final collection for Bottega Veneta (before moving to Chanel), Matthieu Blazy went for a quirky effect, giving his 18-karat gold-plated silver fish earrings pearl bodies and agate eyes ($2,150).
Even the latest high jewelry collections had fish, such as Van Cleef & Arpels’ clip of diamond-studded fish swimming in a glittering ocean of 128 blue and mauve sapphires, weighing a total of 40.89 carats (price on application).
A heightened interest in sustainability most likely led to this school of fish pieces, said Colleen Hill, the senior curator of costume at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. After all, there are “concerns of a future lack of water and the concerns over pollution in our oceans and even pollution within the fish that people are eating,” Dr. Hill said, so such jewels are “a reference to the beauty of ocean life and a need to preserve that.”
Fish as a symbol of good luck, prosperity, freedom and more also probably played a part, Ruby Beales, the jewelry buying manager at Liberty department store in London, wrote in an email. She noted that fish designs also “are conversation starters.”
From the designers’ standpoint, fish motifs allow them to unleash their imaginations. “You can be more creative with fish, because there is no set idea,” said Audrey Cohen, the founder of Audrey C. Jewelry in New York. With motifs such as lips or keys, there is “less you can play with,” she said, because there are standard ideas about what they look like — while “fish are more detailed, with more pieces to put together.”
Yet even the simplest fish design can be intricate. Ms. Cohen, for example, has a red and purple enamel fish necklace, its tail and eye accented with diamonds ($7,000). The fish is divided into five segments and, she said, the head was designed first because “it was easier to go down, and then the tail, as I didn’t know how I wanted to see the tail” — but, she added, “it had to match the measurement of the head.”
Brooke Gregson, a jewelry designer in Los Angeles and London, said she found a fish shape more difficult to work with than other animals, such as butterflies. “If you take away the color, you know, the shape isn’t necessarily beautiful,” she said.
And determining a fish shape’s position within a design also can be complicated, she said, noting that she positioned an 18-karat gold fish horizontally on her Diamond Fish Necklace ($2,180) and Fish Chain Link Bracelet ($3,150). If she had dangled the fish, she said, it would look “almost like it’s being hooked and it’s dead. And here it’s alive and swimming.”
Early Designs
In what is now China, fish carved from jade were worn as amulets, hanging like pendants, as far back as 10,000 B.C. in the Neolithic Age, according to Carol Michaelson, a research curator in the British Museum’s Asia department.
And jewelry with fish motifs also has been linked to the earliest known civilization, called Sumer, which from 4,500 to 4,000 B.C. occupied an area now in southern Iraq. The designs made sense, said the jewelry historian Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, “as fish was a very important part of their diet.”
The motif has been used in jewelry throughout history, including as talismans in Ancient Egypt, a symbol of faith among early Christians, a decorative element in Renaissance creations and a common theme in African tribal jewelry.
In modern times, fishing as a popular sport emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so the motifs started to be seen on pieces such as brooches as well as “bracelets that are encircling the wrist, that look like fish,” Dr. Hill said.
And jewelry with skeletonized fish designs appeared in the 1960s, according to Dr. Hill, who has included a pair of gold tone aluminum earrings from that period in “Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” scheduled through April 20 at the F.I.T. museum.
Squid v. Octopus
Today all sorts of fish are represented in jewelry. Koi, a Japanese term for carp, recently were presented in a variety of 18-karat gold designs accented with diamonds by the Sydney Evan brand in Los Angeles; Dory, a blue tang in Disney’s “Finding Nemo,” was reimagined in garnets and in tanzanite by Marie-Hélène de Taillac in Paris; and the Japanese delicacy fugu, or puffer fish, was turned into 18-karat yellow gold stud earrings with diamond eyes by Melinda Zeman, the founder of Boochier in Hong Kong.
Mr. Webster said he was creating a titanium and aquamarine necklace in the shape of a squid, accented with diamonds and emeralds (price on application). “A squid is a lot easier to work with than — this is going to sound really stupid — an octopus,” he said.
The squid has “a long tubular body and, you go, ‘I can work with that’ because that can then form, you know, a necklace. I couldn’t do that with an octopus because it’s a big blob.”
A single earring of a fish in 18-karat white and pink gold studded with diamonds and pink sapphires was designed by Mio Harutaka in Tokyo ($2,260), while Ulla Johnson created a brass Sana fish necklace ($490), which the brand said was “assembled with small hinges to allow movement.”
Fish scales have been an obsession for Selim Mouzannar, the jewelry designer based in Beirut, since 2021.
He said he was adapting his round Basilik setting to hold round gems, a combination intended to resemble scales, for 10 new necklaces (starting at $2,360), including an 18-karat pink gold necklace in coral enamel with pink and yellow sapphires and diamonds.
And he is creating an iteration of his 18-karat pink gold cuff, set with aquamarines, peridots, tourmalines and sapphires, adding yellow enamel fish scales in large and small sizes, connected to the bracelet with gold wire to allow movement.
Mr. Mouzannar, like several of his counterparts, also has been experimenting with new fish motif designs. He said he wanted to use Paraíba tourmalines for fish scales as “the transparency of the Paraíba looks like the crystal water of the ocean so is connected to the fish.”
And Ms. Gregson said the color and variety of tropical fish had her planning new designs. “It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “Fish like this, it’s going to take forever. But I’m going to do it.”
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