How to tell real pearls from imitation

Here is an interesting article from Pearl-Lang pearls on how to tell if your pearls are real or fake.  I have tried to do this with three strands of pearls I own, one of which I was convinced was real, but no!  After the tooth test and close examination, I have 3 definate fake strands.  But alas, they work well for costuming!! ;)

Pearls are beautiful and valuable. But since the discovery of these rare gems in ancient times, people have been using machines to produce fake ones. 

So how can you tell if a pearl is real? Here are a few tips that can help you identify real pearls from the fake ones.

Temperature

The first step you can take is to touch them and feel the temperature. Real pearls are cold to touch for the first couple of seconds before warming up against your skin. Fake plastic pearls have the same temperature as the room temperature and you don’t feel the coolness when you touch them. However, fake ones that are made of glass beads can be cool to touch to start with. But it tends to take them longer to warm up against your skin than real pearls.

Lustre, Surface Characteristics and Matching

When you examine real pearls closely or under magnification, you’ll notice tiny irregularities and ridges on each pearl’s surface. In a strand of cultured pearls, you can always see very tiny differences between them, even when they are top quality and well matched. If the pearls are completely perfect and identical in terms of shape, size, colour and surface characteristics, they are probably fake.

In addition, cultured pearls reflect light differently from the fake ones. The lustre of fake pearls has a glassy look and is unnatural.

Colour

Both natural and cultured pearls often have an overtone, a translucent colour that appears on the outer surface of a pearl. If you notice the pearls have only one uniform colour and are lack of depth, they are likely to be fake. But it’s worth noting that some real pearls have no overtone either. So this method alone cannot tell the authenticity of a pearl.

Shape

Most real pearls are rarely round. A strand of cultured pearls that are perfectly round commands an extremely high price and is very rare.

Surface Feel

Both natural and cultured pearls have textured surface due to their layered nacre structure. So when you rub the pearls lightly against each other or on your front teeth, they feel a little gritty. Fake or imitation pearls, however, usually feel smooth or glassy.

Weight

Real pearls are normally heavier than the fake ones.

Drill Holes

The drill holes in real pearls are usually very small whereas those in imitation pearls are often larger. Under magnification, the coating around the drill holes of fake pearls is normally thin and looks like a shiny paint. You can often see flakes or chipped coating around the drill holes that will eventually peel off.

It’s important to remember that all the methods above cannot be used alone to reach a conclusive judgment on whether or not a pearl is real. It’s always useful to combine several of these methods together to detect fake pearls. You can also have pearls tested in a gemological laboratory for a more conclusive result.

Your retailers should tell you whether the pearls you’re buying are real or fake. You should also be cautious when they tell you the pearls are natural. Natural pearls are formed without human intervention and are extremely rare and expensive.

18th century fashion: dress before and after the French Revolution

The 18th century was a century of great shifts in political and social thinking.  In the beginning of the century, Europe was still dominated by the idea that monarchs were "chosen by God", and this was their true belief.  This idea was so prevelant, that priests and clergymen were often present at the birth of royals in order to ordain their souls as sacrosanct to god and their "chosen position".  This idea begins to fall apart with the Age of Enlightenment, an era from the 1650s to the 1780s, in which cultural and intellectual forces in Western Europe emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority.  

Historically, the garments we wear on our bodies are a direct link to the eras we live in.  In 18th century france, prior to the Revolution, this can be seen directly in the fashions, opulent gowns, and techniques of making clothing for the elite.

Ikat Silk Dress, 1770

Early period 1700-1770: Fancy fashions

As the 18th century dawn the materials, import, and accessibility of dressmakers to make ensembles which allowed women in Europe and especially France to be fashionable was becoming a world market. Silk roads opening in the far east, travellers and explorers bringing back new prints, cottons, and trims, and a fascination with all things "different" began to culminate in this era.  One of the more popular prints was the ikat print technique brought back from india, which is a dyeing technique used to pattern textiles that employs a resist dyeing process on the warp fibres, the weft fibres, or in the rare and costly 'double ikat' both warp and weft, prior to dyeing and weaving.  Other popular styles were imitations of delicate China silk and brocade.

China Silk Dress, 18th Century

2 Fans, one French, one Chinese, 18th Century

These exotic prints and influences were an example that the 18th century European woman was a forward thinking fashionista.  An 18th century woman's trousseau was a lifetime achievement, and she ammassed her clothes with a selection an careful thought as to each and every piece.  This new emphasis on fashion is exactly the thought process that sheltered the elite European woman from the goings on of poor, political and working class life.  Even so, not much had changed in the basic "function" of garment making.  The basic "separates" idea of dressmaking and fitting that had been around since the Elizabethan era remained prevelant, with a gown consisting of a stomacher, panniers, robe, stays, and petticoat.   One difference is that previous eras the stomacher, or frontispiece of the gown, was mixed and matched more often with other robes and petticoats because of necessity of expense.  But the 18th century woman had much to prove in the fashion arena, and by the end of the 18th century, most women were asking their dressmakers for matching robes and stomachers.

Early stomacher, 18th century  Often heavily embroidered or ornamented, stomachers could be tied  or sewn into different robes and were therefore the most ornamented piece of a woman's wardrobe.  In earlier eras, this meant a woman could mix and match her stomacher to several gowns and petticoats.

Stomacher and matching gown, mid 18th century. Differently than in previous eras, robes and stomachers were often a matched set. 

Dress and matching stomacher, 1753

Wigs also were an expressive medium, as women all over Paris sought to imitate the elaborate hairdos of Madame du Pompadour and Marie Antoinette.  These looks reached their pinnacle in the mid 18th century,  and hairdos that featured 3-masted ships and birds singing in cages were set atop massive powdered wigs.    

Satire of woman's hairdo, 18th century France.  The caption reads "Coiffure a l'independence ou le Triomphe de la liberte"  which translates in to Hairdo of Independence or Triumph of Liberty.

By the middle-end of the 18th century, fashion had become so aggrandized court gowns often featured panniers so wide that women could not fit through doorways.  They were elaborately embroidered with metallic silk thread.  The emphasis was on making the waist seem as miniscule as possible, and effect achieved in the gown below:

Court Dress, Stockholm Sweden, circa 1774

The lower classes, meanwhile, had no means to partake in such frivolity, and when magazines and newpapers of the era printed images that began to mock and denigrate the ruling elite for their fashion choices, it was noticed.  While peasants starved in the streets, the resentment grew, and in 1789 thousands of people in France began to revolt.  

Servant girl in silk gown, 1750s.  Many servants of the elite wore their Mistresses cast offs, so it was not unusual to see a serving girl or peasant in 2nd or third generation frayed finery, which I imagine added insult to injury.

Transitional period 1770-1800:  

The French Revolution leveled the playing field, and while the cause of naturalism had already been adopted by the elite prior to the revolt, it truly impacted fashion during this era.  We see a marked shift from elaborate materials to quieter, simpler dresses using cottons and smaller prints.  The large ikat prints and elaborate metallic embroidery of previous decades is gone.

A transitional gown, late 18th century.  This straddles the fashion from earlier eras, but the stomacher is gone, and the materials are more simplistic and natural.  Note the large belt with painted landscape scenes.

Women's dress, 1795, a transitional period.  Though the waistline is not as extremely underbust, it effectively straddles the 2 styles with lighter softer materials and a naturalistic style.  Also, the stomacher has become a thing of the past

Children, late 18th century.  Transitional clothing, with naturalistic style beginning to emerge in the materials.

After the Revolution of 1789 the groundwork is laid to move away from the opulence of the previous centuries and we see an abrupt shift in 1800 to a classical dress.  Often made from a single material, this look meant to mimic the classical eras of early Greece and Rome.  From a societal standpoint, one could almost say France was brought back to an infantile state at the time, and was looking to "start over".  It can certainly be seen in the political landscape with he fall of the noble elite in the French Revolution and the interim republics and rise of Napoleon.  The new philosphy of classicism as the "pure" form of thought was a favored by Napoleon, who's agenda was to reject the idea of "sovreignty".   Regardless, as several classes and age groups clung to the traditional dress (by choice or by necessity), society as a whole adopted the new look as a complete rejection of everything that had come before.     

Gauze dress, 1800.  An extreme departure in waistline, the waist is now directly under the bust and the dress has a conical, classical style, in a nod to early Roman and greek chitons.

Painting of a young Regency couple, 1802.  Notice the older lady and gentlemen at the right, who wear the outmoded dress of the previous century.

Regency ball gown, early 1800s

Regency gown, early 1800s.  Cotton embroidered gown with embroidered shawl.

Seasonal Color Analysis

SEASONAL COLOR ANALYSIS

I have been reading recently about Seasonal Color Analysis, and based on what I have learned so far, you have certain colors that pick up a brightness in your look and certain colors that wash you out, do you no favors.  Duh, right?  But in the 80's there was a "science" behind this called Seasonal Color Analysis.  Technicians used to "drape" women with different colors in daylight to find out what colors suited them best.  Eventually, a set pattern seemed to develop of eyes/hair/skintone that calculated you to be in one of the 4 seasons.  And within those there are subcategories of Soft, Light, Bright, Warm, Deep, and Cool, depending on the season.   This is a very interesting concept for designers, because it really can be a useful tool in analyzing what colors do and don't work on your client/actress/self.  If you are trying to find your season, the biggest tell is the eyes, as defined by the first chart.  Its fun to find your color, and the technicians who do this for a living actually "drape" you with colors to find your look.  Below I grouped several models according to what I thought is their seasonal color.  I tried to find subjects who hadn't appeared to alter their natural hair too severely, with neutral lighting to the photographs.  It is fun to find your color, and it opens up a whole new realm for your wardrobe when you realize how the colors you wear really do affect how you look! The clothing color palettes included are skewed towards the Clear/Cool/Warm/Cool categories, but are colors of clothing that will brighten your appearance the best.

Clear Spring

Light Spring

Clear Spring

Warm Spring

Clear Spring

Clear Spring

Light Spring

Clear Spring

Clear Spring

Clear Spring

Clear Spring

BEST COLORS FOR SPRINGS

Warm Spring

Clear Spring

Clear Spring

SUMMER-Cool and Delicate

Summer is defined by cool, cool, cool.  Cool eyes, cool tones to hair and skin (no peach/red) and neutral eyes with the delicate eye pattern of cracked glass and a soft outer rim.  Generally I have found Summers to be ashy brunette/blonde with blue eyes, but hazel and green eyes are common also.  People with brown eyes/gold eyes are rare to fit into the Summer category because they have to be a cool brown rather than a warm brown tone.  Light Summer is the blonde category for summers, Cool Summer has a cool skintone with some contrast to the combination of eyes/skin/hair, and Soft Summer is the same tonality with less contrast, (but not as light as a Light Summer.)  

BEST COLORS FOR SUMMERS

Cool Summer

Light Summer

Soft Summer

Light Summer

Soft Summer

Soft Summer

Cool Summer

Soft Summer

Soft Summer

Soft Summer

Cool Summer

AUTUMN-Warm and Rich
Autumn is the companian season to Spring, meaning the undertones are warm.  Warm skin, warm hair, and warm or neutral eyes.  Since spring and Autumn overlap, many Springs can wear Autumn colors, and vice versa.  The difference between spring and fall seems to lie in the colors:  Fall will inevitably be a deeper, more earthy hue and not have the brightness to their color combination of a true spring.

Soft Autumn

Warm Autumn

Warm Autumn

Warm Autumn

Warm Autumn

Soft Autumn

Soft Autumn

Soft Autumn

Warm Autumn

Soft Autumn

Soft Autumn

Deep Autumn

BEST COLORS FOR AUTUMNS 

Warm Autumn

Deep Autumn

Deep Autumn

Warm Autumn

Warm Autumn

WINTER-Cool and Brilliant
Winter has the highest contrast of skin/hair/eyes and is the companion season to Summer.  Many summers/winters can overlap their colors depending on their chroma.  If we look at true Winters, however, their contrast is quite dramatic and their skin is generally white or cool with pink/blue undertones, and they have a heavy contrast to their look which allows them to wear jewel tones so effortlessly.  Their skin is often translucent.  Winters often attain salt and pepper hair as they grow older.

Deep Winter

BEST COLORS FOR WINTERS

Deep Winter

Deep Winter

Cool Winter

Clear Winter

Clear Winter

Clear Winter

Deep Winter

Cool Winter

Cool Winter

Cool Winter

Cool Winter