Jewelry has been at the core of Marion Fasel’s career. For nearly two decades, she was in charge, along with the late Penny Proddow, of the jewelry coverage for InStyle magazine. But that wasn’t her only tie to the world of precious and semi-precious gemstones. Fasel is also a consultant and curator, and authored eight books including Bejeweled: Great Designers, With This Ring: The Ultimate Guide to Wedding Jewelry and Hollywood Jewels: Movies, Jewelry, Stars.
Fasel recently turned to attention to telling the story behind the most magnificent jewels with TheAdventurine.com, her online magazine. With the number of CFDA jewelry designers on the rise, we checked in with Fasel about her passion for baubles, the way the jewelry industry has changed in the past two decades, and her all-time favorite piece of jewelry.
When did you become interested in jewelry?
My mother always likes to tell the story that, when I was very young and a friend of mine would have a birthday party, I would make her or my father take me to this boutique called Bedazzled where you could make necklaces and bracelets. I insisted on doing that as a child. The truth is, right out of college, I worked as as an archivist for a private jewelry collection, just cataloging jewelry. I fell in love immediately. I loved the art and history and fashion. Simultaneously, I joined InStyle as a contributing editor, which was ongoing for 17 years beginning in 1996. The magazine was still very small when Penny and I started contributing stories.
Why did you decide to launch TheAdventurine.com?
I remember the day I first read about blogs in the New York Times. I took the newspaper into the office and said, ‘We must do it.’ Of course, we had no clue. It was so long ago and the Times was writing about blogging as a novel concept. I was always interested in online platforms and enjoyed looking at them. I never cared what the outlet was, I just always wanted to tell the story—such as the one about Uhura’s necklace in Star Trek, and Katy Perry’s Stars-and-Stripes Bulgari necklace at the Democratic National Convention.
How did you come up with the name?
To me jewelry is so much about the story. The designs are so important but I really like the deep-dive on the jewelry stories; how people came up with the ideas, what was involved in it. I was reading the dictionary of gemstones, and came to aventurine, and just added the ‘d’ – since that’s how I feel about jewelry. It’s an adventure. It takes you on a journey from a design to consumer.
How have you seen jewelry evolve in the past 20 years?
Designer jewelry was a very small field in the beginning. There weren’t many independent jewelry designers, and Los Angeles- based people were big with the celebrity market, like Neil Lane, Martin Katz, Loree Rodkin and Cathy Waterman who dominated the red carpet. There is still a big jewelry business on the West Coast. Irene Neuwirth is there, and so are Spinelli Kilcollin and Jennifer Meyer. They have become names, and are very influential at a high-profile level. They have an automatic celebrity connection. It’s natural for them to dress celebrities, but unlike previous generations, they also became part of the fashion set, which I credit the CFDA with. These are designers people know.
What do you hope you hope to achieve with the site?
I hope to broaden people’s ideas of what jewelry is … it’s the small pieces, the big pieces, the storytelling, the techniques, the gems, and more. I hope that it’s a fun way for people to enjoy jewelry. I almost want readers to forget that the story is about jewelry, and think of it more as a general interest piece, treating jewelry as a way of looking at the world.
Do you have a personal favorite piece of jewelry?
My Cartier Love bracelet. It’s the one piece that I wear every day. In 2012, Cartier re-launched the bracelet designed by Aldo Cipullo. I fell in love with the man and the story behind the bracelet. I never take it off, I sleep in it. It’s a comfortable piece of jewelry with a great story.
