I have a confession. Despite working for 25 years in Vogue House, the former home to Condé Nast’s London operations, I found fashion, well … a tad monotonous. Jewelry was the subject that captivated me. I’m a firm believer in a saying by Diana Vreeland, who edited Vogue during the 60s: “Anyone who thinks jewelry isn’t important is nuts.” But post-Vreeland, Condé Nast relegated jewelry to accessories, beneath even the lingerie and shoes covered by reluctant fashion editors. I had to create my own dream job. I became the first jewelry editor at Tatler magazine, and then later at British Vogue, and from there I sent glittering commentaries across the Atlantic and wrote for other Condé Nast properties such as Vanity Fair and American Vogue.
The whirligig of jewels was never boring, but neither was it all glitz and glamour. Sure, there were spoiling, five-star foreign adventures with big brands and the thrill of holding a magnificent jewel that only five people in the world could afford, but jewelry didn’t command the big budgets of fashion magazines, so I’d be tasked with photographing priceless jewels in studios in areas with soaring crime rates, hoping the neighbors didn’t figure out what was being delivered in the stream of black limos.
The jewels were sent with “security”—usually a young P.R. girl—with nothing but a flimsy door standing between me and a headline-grabbing heist. Working with the late photographer Corinne Day was the most stressful. One time, she asked the value of the jewelry in the studio, and I guessed around a cool $10 million—a figure she promised, in a reassuring aside, she’d keep from her dad because he used to be a bank robber.
Jewelry is freighted with beauty, history, and desire, so each assignment became a window not only into luxury but into the theater of human longing. Time and again, we are captivated by tales of a maharaja’s stolen emerald or a duchess’s tiara being spirited away during a revolution; historic thefts in the highest echelons of society have a romanticism far from the menacing reality of today’s smash-and-grab robberies. The constant dance between allure and danger gave each assignment its edge.
As much as I’d like to report that nothing was lost, there was a spate of thefts when a crook posing as my new male “assistant” called Bond Street stores, demanding jewels be delivered to a made-up shoot, where he stole them. He stalked me, so every time I stepped through the revolving glass doors of Vogue House, I felt I was being followed. The problem began when British entertainer Jimmy Tarbuck introduced me on television in 2004 as “the woman who goes to work with millions of pounds of jewels in her bag.” Savile Row police were equally helpful, suggesting that a stalker was like having a “fashion accessory,” because you’re no one until you’ve got one—before handing me a rape alarm.
I did require security to “pack heat” for one shoot in Los Angeles. As I flew into the city to cover the 2003 diamond anniversary of the Academy Awards, the Iraq War broke out. The Oscars were threatened with cancellation. Actresses were dropping jewels like hot potatoes in favor of compassionate-looking cocktail dresses devoid of any sparkle. With six pages to fill, I needed a sparkling story. Using a faux-gold statuette and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Harry Winston and De Beers diamonds, I managed to simulate the fabled glamour of Oscar night on the streets of Hollywood.
The 476-carat diamond that would have attracted the grandest theft of my Vogue career was the $16.5 million Graff Meya Prosperity, the 29th-largest diamond ever uncovered, which the company acquired in 2018. As it was too expensive to insure for the studio, I instead used an exact reproduction. Why didn’t I employ more paste jewelry to avoid the threat of theft? Because the beauty of a natural gemstone is incomparable. Their inherent magic even persuaded ardent eco-campaigners like actresses Lily Cole (in 2007) and Romola Garai (in 2011) to dismiss their environmental concerns about mining long enough for me to photograph them wearing dazzling diamonds for Vogue shoots.
Nearly 400 shoots and innumerable trends later, I’ve realized that for all the noise about newness in glossy magazines, human beings have essentially worn the same jeweled ornaments in every culture and civilization from the beginning. After sitting at the same desk for many years, I exited Vogue in 2020 for new challenges—the jewelry, however, I’ll never leave behind. I started a podcast and wrote a book, If Jewels Could Talk, about the mysteries and histories of seven objects we’ve always worn, and, in doing so, uncovered the best and worst of human nature—including why we covet jewels that aren’t our own. Small wonder I spent years waiting for Corinne’s dad to burst into the studio.
Carol Woolton is the contributing jewelry director at British Vogue, the author of several books, and the host of the podcast If Jewels Could Talk
