The way Coco Chanel used to wear jewelry is still inspiring today. She wore jewelry with the same approach she designed her clothing: classic, feminine and innovative. Chanel started to create costume jewelry using colored glass stones and semi-precious gemstones. As everything else she created she did it in her own artistic way. In her studio she would play with flexible modeling plastic shaping them into jewelry, incrusting real and fake gemstones and real and fake pearls until she created the effect she wanted. Also under her supervision, many talented artists designed jewelry for her line. According to Jean Leymarie’s book, she never wore any of her exquisite pieces of jewelry she received from the Duke of Westminster in public, instead she would wear her own creations.  She mostly wore Coco Chanel Jewelries.  A very smart business woman. I think many others would be more than anxious to show them off in society. She would wear her expensive jewelry inside the privacy of her home. Notice the picture above where she is playing the accordion while wearing a spectacular necklace made of square-cut emeralds surrounded by round-cut diamonds. Isn’t that a stunning image of Chanel’s fantastic lifestyle?
It’s funny to imagine Chanel being a little bit superstitious since she would never go out without two pieces of jewelry; a topaz ring given to her as a good-luck talisman when she was sixteen by an old lady, and a pearl necklace she received from Boy Capel as a token of his love. I personally find this last very powerful and sweet.

Chanel’s astrological sign was the lion head, which she seemed to favor as much as the cross and used them a lot to embellish her jewelries. Picture above is a vermeil necklace made of 121 lion heads with a carved rock crystal cross at the center.