As she approaches her 40th birthday, Laura Greenman, a lawyer with three children, has started wearing gold jewellery.
‘When I was in my 20s and early 30s I thought gold was ostentatious and over the top, except for my wedding ring. It was for hip-hop stars and Gypsy Rose Lee. My husband thinks it is a return to my great-grandmother’s Lithuanian roots and me wanting stuff to sell in an emergency, but I happen to think that it is more flattering for my age group. What do you think?”
She shows me the chain around her neck. It is flat and woven and reminds me of something I once saw in the Roman section at the British Museum.
It is lovely, but I have to admit that I am strictly a silver wearer. Even my wedding ring is a thin band of gold set within a much bigger ring of silver. To my mind, gold is a little garish.
It so happens that Laura and I are exactly the sort of middle-class women in their 20s, 30s and 40s at whom the World Gold Council’s $4-million recent advertising campaign ‘Speak gold” is aimed. According to the council’s figures, the United Kingdom is now the third-largest market for gold jewellery in the world after the United States and India, having overtaken Italy. Last year UK sales of gold jewellery reached a staggering $3-billion, up more than 20% since 1998.
From the Indian bride to the Italian wife with an expensive designer necklace, through to the British teenager who buys her first nine-carat hoops from H Samuel, women are the main buyers of gold jewellery. And as 80% of gold produced each year is turned into jewellery, it quickly becomes clear why the World Gold Council and its members are so keenly targeting women.
The continuing success of the gold-mining industry is inextricably linked with the fortunes of the jewellery trade. Christina Sami, head of research at the World Gold Council, says: ‘In countries like India, China and Turkey, gold jewellery has a complex financial, spiritual and emotional value. Even in industrialised countries, where gold jewellery is primarily a fashion item and mixed with other metals to make a lower carat, many women say that their gold jewellery makes them feel a range of emotions such as warmth, security and strength.”
Others in the trade cite underlying insecurity since 9/11 as the reason for buying something lasting and valuable, although for younger British women, the surge in gold sales is probably less to do with concern about instability in the Middle East than with hip-hop and R&B culture. The World Gold Council seems to be trying to distance itself from ‘bling” (rap jargon for ostentatious wealth) — but the sight of chart-topping acts like rapper Missy Elliott wearing fabulous gold chains undoubtedly has much to do with the new trend.
Gina Gibson (15) who wears thick gold loop earrings, five twisted gold bangles and a gold chain with a little doll hanging from it, explains the attraction as she drools over the gold jewellery in the Argos (UK chain store) catalogue. ‘Gold just looks good. It looks like you are going somewhere, doesn’t it? Look how mean your silver looks compared to my stuff.†She holds her arm up next to mine and for a minute I understand.
But older British women are just as responsible for the change in gold’s fortunes. Is there any truth in the 9/11 theory? Is there a sort of collec- tive unconsciousness among British women that understands the increased value of gold in uncertain times?
Perhaps, like our Asian, Middle Eastern and Gypsy sisters, we secretly need to feel that we have an insurance policy around our necks? There are dozens of new investment companies on the Internet selling beautiful, classic 24-carat gold necklaces aimed at American and British women. The Bullion Collection’s website reminds us that gold is ‘a currency without borders”. It tells us: ‘These are exciting and uncertain times, when we all should turn to jewellery of enduring value.”
We are reminded that in times of financial crisis in the past — such as after the 1929 Wall Street crash — citizens had to surrender all gold bars and coins to the state. Jewellery, on the other hand, was safe.
The price of gold is certainly strong at the moment. According to Anthony Rowley of the Business Times Online, ‘Gold’s classic role as a store of value — which it has had for the past 3 000 years — was pooh-poohed in the Nineties by those who felt that paper securities were now so sophisticated as to render the idea of an investment like gold obsolete.”
But in 2002 prices started to climb because of the imminent war with Iraq. Since then gold prices have not fallen, as expected, but have continued to rise to a healthy price of $385 an ounce compared to $330 when war was declared in April.
Female friends agree that there is a security investment aspect to the wearing of gold, but add that it cheers them up to wear it.
The four pawn shops on my local high street have windows full of gold; none of them bothers displaying the silver. Inside you can find gold jewellery from Africa, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and other Asian countries.
One shop has a handwritten sign outside with the message ‘Nothing feels as good as goldâ€. Its owner says: ‘It is nearly always women who pawn their gold. Very rarely men. Gold jewellery is female currency, you see.”
My Zairean friend would agree. She escaped Mobutu Seso Seko’s regime using her gold to secure her family’s passage to London. Once she was here, she pawned it to pay for medical bills and to furnish her apartment. She was never able to buy it back and deeply regrets the loss of the gold that she was given by her mother, but is also grateful for its ability to hold its value from country to country.
The multiracial aspect of our cities may also be a clue to why British women have started to be interested in buying gold again. Immigrants and refugees bring their more complex attitude towards gold jewellery as personal, portable female insurance against future hardship as well as using it as a status symbol and adornment.
Julie Charles (32) whose parents were from Jamaica, says that if her husband were to give her silver, she would be furious. ‘I have a chunky gold ring as well as a gold engagement ring and wedding ring and I wear 18-carat gold chains, which are elegant, not massive great clanking things. I also have about 10 kinds of hoops. My husband has given me all these things as he has got more successful. It makes both of us proud when we go out together because, to be honest, other people, and in particular other women, do notice when you are wearing gold. You get those sneaky, slightly jealous looks from both black and white women.”
Rosy James (40) buys her gold jewellery in Southall, London. ‘There are more and more non-Asian women buying their jewellery there because of the quality of the gold, and the designs are beautiful and unusual. The whole Bollywood thing made women like gold more too. Other women I know go to Turkish areas to buy gold jewellery. I would never consider going somewhere upmarket like Tiffany’s or downmarket like H Samuel. I suppose I want something that has a cultural history to it as well.”
Stephen Webster is the rock stars’ favourite jeweller, with artists from Ozzy Osbourne to Pink wearing his jewel-encrusted knuckleduster rings. ‘I am convinced that one woman has a lot to do with the renewed interest in gold: J-Lo. She looks great in it, she wears it in a way that looks totally feminine and modern. She is definitely a huge part of the backlash against the stark white metal code of the past few years, which was possibly a reaction against the show-off Eighties,” he says.
Personally, I am not quite ready to give up my silver rings, bracelets and necklace just yet. But I am bearing in mind how a few grains of gold makesound sense in these uncertain times. —