IF BLING COULD SING...

Vogue expert Carol Woolton reveals why jewellery doesn't just dazzle us, but also provides an extraordinary glimpse into social history... stretching back to our earliest civilisations

- Jane Warren

FOR FOUR decades, Vogue jewel lery editor Carol Woolton has immersed herself in the world o the baubles that define us, remaining a big believer that small objects tell big stories. "Jewellery bears our meaning in perpetuity," insists the woman who has adorned countless celebrities for fashion shoots under three Vogue editors and, in the process, become the global go-to expert on the art and culture of personal treasure.

She may have handled some of the most luxurious and costly pieces ever made, dripping with diamonds and other precious stones, but among Carol's particular favourites - due to their immense historical provenance - are the 100,000-year-old shell beads discovered in the Skhul Cave archeological site on Israel's Mediterranean coast in the early half of the 20th century.

"They are too tiny to have been collected as food, and the human-made perforation in the shells has been done deliberately to string and wear decoratively," she says. This shows early signs of organised human behaviour as well as how personal ornaments are powerful tools to communicate the way people used to live. Diamonds might be a "girl's best friend", as Marilyn Monroe sang in the 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but jewellery is also a link connecting past to present. "Every civilisation has divulged its secrets through surviving adornments left behind in burial sites," says Carol.

Arcane traditions and insights into social history underscore the history of the bling that defines us. For instance, in 13th-century England, the Catholic Church banned ear piercing claiming it unduly altered one's appearance as created by God.