DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
BY LAURIE BROOKINS
G race Kelly famously pronounced the pearl “the queen of gems and the gem of queens.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis agreed: “Pearls are always appropriate,” she once said. Two of the 20th century’s most celebrated style icons believed wholeheartedly in the power of the pearl, and now this iconic gem is hotter than ever. The popularity of pearls in jewelry and fashion trends also promises to dovetail nicely with a major milestone in 2023: Mikimoto will celebrate 130 years since Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto founded the legendary pearl house that bears his name. Mikimoto has been a fan of pearls since he was a young boy who watched divers bring in their daily hauls on the shores of Toba, a port town located on the eastern tip of Japan’s Shima peninsula. But even as he admired the natural organic gemstones, he wondered if there was a way to consistently produce pearls that were perfectly round and smooth. In 1888, Mikimoto and his wife, Ume, experimented with introducing an irritant into Akoya oysters. It was a tiny mother-of-pearl bead that stimulated the oyster’s nacre secretion and caused it to create thousands of layers around the bead, forming a beautiful pearl. Five years later, it was Ume who retrieved the basket of oysters that proved Mikimoto’s idea would succeed. The harvest revealed a crop of semi-spherical cultured pearls. By 1896 he had received his first patent, and in 1899, he opened his first Mikimoto boutique in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district. Pearls a culture of
MIKIMOTO IS CELEBRATING ITS 130TH ANNIVERSARY IN 2023, AT A MOMENT WHEN PEARLS ARE AMONG THE HOTTEST JEWELS FOR CONSUMERS AND A-LIST CELEBRITIES ALIKE
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