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I bet you've never spent as much time in your entire life ruminating over a brooch as you have this week.
In fact — I bet you've never even said the word "brooch" out loud before this week.
The brooch — the least-favoured accessory of all accessories — has now become a little cause celebre of its own, a thing of wonder, speculation, embarrassment and barely suppressed glee, as two of the things form part of the outrageous haul of French crown jewels taken from the Louvre in Paris by as-yet unapprehended thieves.
One of the brooches, Empress Eugénie's Reliquary Brooch, which contains rare fat, pink diamonds.
It now has its own little account on Instagram, where she screeches with delight.
After years of being ignored in the same dusty casement as crowns and necklaces, she is loving being "out on these streets … I ain't never coming back! I'm a brooch, bitch!"
I hope she enjoys her brief time out in the world, twinkling under the pitiless UV light of her new handlers, before she gets locked in her next secret cave — one from which she will probably never emerge, and possibly not looking quite the same.
This week's heist served to underline and emphasise the universally observed hierarchy of theft. It goes something like this:
Wage theft: very bad
Personal data theft: pretty bad (but the company involved will rock on, unharmed)
Parking spot theft: annoying, but whaddya gonna do?
Jewellery theft: Well, NOW you're talking …
Cue the Pink Panther/Ocean's 8/Kim Kardashian in Paris and Cary Grant and Grace Kelly memes, because this week's story has snuggled very comfortably into the tradition of "fun crimes that we assume have no victim so we can therefore fantasise about having perpetrated ourselves".
Thefts like these that involve beautiful things — paintings, furs, boats, luxury goods, jewellery — belong to a cultural class of "tasteful crime": the theft of things so expensive and exotic that we, the people, consider they should be "everybody's but nobody's" and therefore the heist itself forms a kind of public act of entertainment that no-one need feel guilty about enjoying.
It's why the cat burglar movie keeps being made. It's why there was almost no discernible public sympathy when Kim lost her rocks in the City of Lights, even though it was, traumatically, at gunpoint. It's why nobody weeps for the loss of Royal jewels, jealously hoarded but pathetically guarded by a Revolutionary Republic that made the acquisition of such neck adornments so much easier by removing the heads of the people who wore them.
There is an aesthetics of transgression in a high-profile crime of very lovely things that contrasts strongly with ordinary displays of individual wealth so nauseating that this crime is almost refreshing, liberating.
The Versailles-level weddings and celebrations of technocrats and oligarchs and industry moguls, with deep-planed faces and necks straining to hold up Flintstones-sized diamonds and emeralds appall us.
But the tale of nimble thieves in high-vis vests, on puttering mopeds who refuse to get out of bed before 9.30am make us clap our hands with delight.
It's why we are always disgusted by stolen wages but secretly thrilled by a stolen tiara.
It's also hard to be shocked by the "loss" of jewels when the world seems to be awash with extraordinary ones just like them. The well-publicised events of the super-rich — their keen desire for us to see how they party and how they adorn themselves in ways that only Sun Kings could — inures us to the rarity of jewelled beauty. The excessiveness of it all wears us out and makes a mockery of the idea of exclusivity and rarity.
I see fat rocks everywhere, on every celebrity's neck. I see them on royals, dictators and internet princes and princesses. Every Hollywood star now gets an engagement ring of the size that would have once dominated front pages for days back when Burton bought another one for Liz.
I see rocks stolen by empires from the shocked countries they forcibly colonised and I watch as, over the decades, they refuse to give them back, and so I shrug at the idea that the thief has now become the victim.
Maybe the one aspect of the crime that pierces us is the loss of history that goes with the jewellery: The craft of the pieces, their unusual stones and now impossibly rare pear-shaped pearls, and the significant moments in history from which they date. Their loss breaks that documented connection with an important past just a little more.
But when the world is full of so much loss, when people and countries and cultures are being eradicated before our eyes, when ecosystems and habitats and species are disappearing forever, it seems wrong to weep for just stones and gold. We understand glamour, greed and value better now than when these jewels were being worn by their complacent custodians. So if you want to talk about "loss", you better come up with an example greater than an emerald that could choke a countess.
This weekend you can delve into the crime a little more and spend some proper "deep" time with the most important and ancient history of all
— the history of ancient Indigenous Australia.
Have a safe and happy weekend and for this Saturday morning I've delved into my ready Shazam bag of "ooooh — what's that? I need to know that!" songs and come up with Witchoo, the standout track from Durand Jones & The Indications's 2021 album, Private Space. This is a little homage to classic soul, via disco and modern funk, which is the route my sat-nav is always set to. Go well. |
