IS JEWELLERY FOR MEN GOING OUT OF FASHION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 4, 23 May 1890, Page 7

IS JEWELLERY FOR MEN GOING OUT OF FASHION.

The: head of one of the largest firms of jewellers in New York remarked theotheraay that the fashion of men wearing jewellery, which prevailed for a time, was brief and feeble.

" Anybody whonowwants jewellery especially designed for men," he Baid, " can get great quantities of it at any of the big establishments at a very low cost. Jewellery for gentlemen has been steadily cheapened month after month in the hope of getting rid of it, but there seems to be no combating the fashion, and the tendency of things now Is for men to wear little or no jewellery at all. It was thought when the big cravats came in vogue again that there would be a great demand for big scarf pins, and a great many of them were put on the market, but the swells who wears the biggest scaris wear the smallest pins, and no man of position in the social or financial world would think of wearing diamond collar buttons, diamond finger rings, or any of the multifarious articles of personal adornment that were formerly so popular. Even the manufacture of jewellery for men, which was at one time a very remunerative branch of the business, has begun to fall off wonderful. Men of any pretensions to fashion do not now wear watch chains. They either carry a cheap watch loose in their pocket or have it attached to a cheap silver key ring chain which is buttoned into the side of the trousers. The severity of fashion regarding jewellery is undoubtedly due to the abuse of the ring craze five or six years ago. A number of wealthy clubmen took up the fashion of wearing two or three rings, many of them decorated with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, and then the cheap dudes all over town began to imitate them. Every errand boy wore a silver or gold washed ring twisted around his finger four or five times, and the whole fashion reached Ruch gaudy proportions that within less than a year men had given up jewellery wearing entirely. Occasionally a cad will be seen about town who is all blazing with diamonds or gaudy pins, but a gentleman is now distinguished by an entire absence of jewellery of every kind. It is a mighty bad thing for our business, too."