How Pearls Keep Coming Back in Style

By Victoria Gomelsky | October 01, 2025

While researching her new book, The Modern Guide to Vintage Jewellery (to be published Oct. 28 by ACC Art Books), jewelry author and historian Beth Bernstein immersed herself in the jewelry styles that emerged between the 1930s and the early 1980s. Along the way, she noticed something impossible to deny about pearls over the past century: “They went in and out of fashion,” Bernstein tells JCK.

“Twenty years ago, they were considered very preppy, or like something your grandmother would wear,” she says. “Around 2008, people like Lene Vibe from Denmark were doing all these cool things with pearls but at first, nobody understood it. They weren’t really accepted but they were cool. Now everybody’s working with pearls again. The last time they were considered really beautiful was in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s—before disco.”

Modern Guide to Vintage Jewellery

Given Gen Z’s penchant for secondhand luxury, however, yesterday’s pearl styles are poised to become just as relevant today. In revisiting the decades of the last century, Bernstein, who described the book as a companion to her earlier tome, The Modern Guide to Antique Jewellery, highlighted the pearl’s rise and fall in popularity as well as the pearl trends that had an influence on women’s style.

“In the ’40s, it was more semiprecious and synthetic stones because of the war years and it was harder to get pearls (as well as rubies, sapphires and emeralds),” Bernstein says. “The big jewelry houses were doing yellow gold or tricolor—they were very creative with the gold they used and the different karats—but you don’t really see many pearls because they were so much harder to get.”

That changed in the 1950s, as fresh supplies coupled with a sense of postwar optimism inspired jewelers to once again revisit the pearl.

“It was after the war, people were getting engaged and married again, young couples were moving out to suburbia, so it was really a suburban lifestyle,” Bernstein says. “That’s when bigger charms and charm bracelets came into being, representing women’s lives and things around the house. Then the cocktail ring came into fashion because women were going to cocktail parties in suburbia.”

It was also a time when the most famous women on screen wore pearls, imbuing the gems with glamour and prestige.

“In the ’50s, you have Grace Kelly, who every woman wanted to look like,” Bernstein says. “She was the No. 1 pearl girl, and she said she wore them in film but also in real life. Movie stars always influenced what women were going to wear. Then you had Audrey Hepburn in the ’60s when Breakfast at Tiffany’s came out. And Jackie Kennedy all in pearls.”

David Webb pearl earrings — *Pearl and diamond earrings by David Webb,* The Modern Guide To Vintage Jewellery *(photo courtesy of ACC Artbooks 2025)*

For the better part of three decades, from the 1950s through the ’70s, pearls very much had a place in contemporary jewelry culture, aided by the interest of designers like David Webb and Verdura.

“But in the ’80s, pearls kind of died down again,” Bernstein says. “For the career woman going back to work—remember the big-shoulder clothes of the era: Armani, Calvin Klein, Anne Klein, Donna Karan—it was much more about jewelry by Bulgari, Marina B, and Paloma Picasso. The bold chokers and interchangeable pieces. You didn’t see a lot of pearls—it was a lot of gold.”

Between then and now, the pearl narrative has continued to twist and turn. From the Tin Cup–inspired hoopla of the mid-1990s (when the film starring Rene Russo made pearl station necklaces all the rage) to today’s all-gender embrace of the gems, the classic pearl is poised to continue its reign. Says Bernstein: “Modern jewelers are looking to vintage jewelry for inspiration and when you look to vintage you will see pearls.”

Top: Vintage pearl and diamond necklace by Suzanne Belperron, c. 1932–1940, The Modern Guide to Vintage Jewellery (photo courtesy of ACC Artbooks 2025)