Pearl necklaces are a perennial favorite, and some would consider them a must-have item over the years. Marilyn Munroe, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Coco Chanel, Princess Diana, The Queen of England, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Gillard, and Julie Bishop are all names that immediately spring to mind when thinking of people who wear pearl necklaces. Pearl necklaces symbolize opulence, royalty, class, and glamour. Whether long or short, large or small, uniform or multicolor, pearl necklaces are always in fashion. Pearl necklaces can be made from many different types of pearls. The best quality comes from Natural Pearls, Tahitian cultured pearls, Australian South Sea pearls , and Japanese Akoya pearls.
When creating a pearl necklace from scratch, pearl merchants pick the center three pearls and work outwards on a necklace board. The necklace board typically has several grooved lines spaced vertically so that one can lay out various lines of pearls a few centimeters or inches at a time to see if the pearls will fit in the final finished pearl necklace. The pearls in the necklace must be matched for color and luster and shape and size. The better matched, the better the overall necklace will look. Some pearl farmers and necklace makers can spend up to five years or longer finishing their very best strands as only a few pearls per year are good enough and the right color, shape, size, and luster to fit into the strand. Pearl strands can be made to be a uniform size over the whole strand, or they can graduate in size from large pearls in the front to smaller at the back. If making a uniform necklace, then all the pearls generally fall within one or one half of one millimeter of each other. For example, a standard Japanese Akoya pearl necklace will be between 6.5 millimeters to 7 millimeters.
If making a pearl necklace graduated in size, then usually three-millimeter graduation is the norm. An example is a Tahitian necklace can be made ranging from 8-11 millimeters and 12-15 millimeters in an Australian pearl necklace. There are no hard and fast set rules, and more and more necklace makers and wholesalers, and retailers are creating necklaces mixing up shapes and types of pearl. Hence, a multicolor Tahitian and Australian and Keshi and south sea pearl necklace are too many consumers of equal interest to a standard straight white pearl necklace.
The standard length of a pearl choker necklace is 16 inches, which is 40.5 centimeters. A Princess length is 18 inches, which is 45 centimeters. A Matinee necklace is 24 inches, 60 centimeters, and an opera length necklace is 30 or 32 inches, which is 75 or 80 centimeters, and a rope of pearls is usually 45 inches, which is 112.5 centimeters.
Diversity is the key to keeping customers interested in pearl necklaces! Pearls have been around for as long as there have been oysters, so the demand has always been there since divers first discovered oysters and pearls. There are historical mentions of pearl necklaces in China and India and Persia, Greece, and Egypt stretching back between 1000 and 4000 years, proving demand for pearls and pearl necklaces is millennial.
Whether the pearl necklace is all pearl or a combination of pearls and colored precious and semi-precious stones, gold and diamonds, a pearl necklace is always going to be a statement of elegance and a must-have in a women’s wardrobe.