Costume jewellery is commonly understood to mean fashionable yet affordable adornments made from non-precious material. Originating in in mid-1700s France with the rise of the bourgeoise, the earliest 'costume jewellery' mimicked fine jewellery styles. Since then, costume jewellery has always been evolving. From Victorian sentimentalism to the mass-produced ornaments available today, costume jewellery has developed into an artform in its own right. An encyclopaedic study of its history is long overdue. Flush with expert information, identification tips and historical anecdotes, Adorning Fashion explores the development of costume jewellery across the past four centuries. The styles of each era - Victorian, Edwardian, Arts & Crafts, Jugenstil, Art Nouveau, and each decade of the twentieth century - are given individual attention. Production methods are also explained in depth. Alloys and gilded electroplating can mimic silver and gold, while the refraction index of treated glass can, to the untrained eye, be mistaken for diamond. Adorning Fashion discusses the contributions of a remarkable roster of designers and innovators, including Kokichi Mikimoto, Arthur L. Liberty, Carlo Giuliano, Rene Lalique, Elizabeth Bonte, the Castellani brothers, Jean Fouquet, Jean Despres, Fulco di Verdura, Jean Schlumberger, Salvador Dali, Miriam Haskell, Lina Baretti, Countess Cissy Zoltowska, Line Vautrin, Kenneth Jay Lane, Francisco Rebajes, Diane Love, Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels, Paco Rabanne, Yves Saint Laurent, Napier, Haskell, Trifari, Brania, Bulgari, Versace and more.

In Italy there has always been a tradition of making jewelery from semi-precious metal, as copies or prototypes of fine jewelery. Fashion Jewelery: Made in Italy moves chronologically through the last 100 years, with pieces from the beginning of the 20th century, through to the years spent under fascist rule, when jewelery had to be strictly made with local material such as wood, cork, straw, venetian glass and coral. The 50s and 60s allowed for the very first big names in fashion jewelery to arise: Giuliano Fratti, Emma Caimi Pellini, Sharra Pagano, Ugo Correani, Coppola e Toppo, Luciana de Reutern, Canesi, Ornella...The book reserves a special place for an important phenomenon that took place in Milan at the end of the 1970s - "Made in Italy" - when Italian fashion entered (and dominated) the international scene, and Italian designers such as Armani, Versace, Ferre, and later on, Moschino and Prada found incredible success all over the world. Throughout the 80s and 90s, and well into the year 2000 further names in fashion jewellery were pushed to the fore: Carlo Zini, Angela Caputi, Maria Calderara, Giorgio Vigna, Fabio Cammarata, Emilio Cressoni, Robert Tomas, Irene Moret, Silvia Beccaria, among others. The final section of the book is devoted to new talents, selecting ten designers whose jewels are particularly interesting and innovative. Famous houses that the jewellery was made for include: Bijoux Bozart, Biki, Carlo Zini, Chanel, Chloe, Coppla E Toppo, Edoardo Saronni, Emilio Pucci, Etro, Fiorucci, Flos Ad Florem, Gianfranco Ferre, Giorgio Armani, Giuliano Fratti, Irene Galitzine, Karl Lagerfeld, Luciana De Reutern, Marni, Missoni, Misterfox, Moschino, Prada, Roberto Capucci, Schiaparelli, Sharra Pagano, Ugo Correani, Unger, Valentino, Versace.