“You can always tell what kind of a person a man really thinks you are by the earrings he gives you,” said Audrey Hepburn in the iconic movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The women described in Rhodes and Papi’s book, 20th Century Jewelry and the Icons of Style, however, believed in buying their own jewels for the most part. The writers have chosen 11 different women as representatives of the power of jewellery to shape and define personalities and, in some cases, to change the courses of lives. They start with Marjorie Merriwether Post, an American heiress who collected jewels (and some would say, husbands) from the most famous jewellers of the time, the most famous among them being Cartier. The description of her journey through the famous houses of these jewellers is also a look at the history of New York during the early 1920s and the effects (such as they were) on the rich and famous of the stock market crash of 1929. The importance of her jewels is to be seen from her decision to sell her 5th Avenue house rather than part with her precious collection. Eventually, however, Post left her entire collection of jewels as well as her other prized possessions to a charity so that they would benefit future generations. Other women portrayed in the book range from heiresses to fortune hunters and social climbers, as well as royalty thrown in for good measure. Men are characterised for the most part as tradable commodities or sources of acquiring fabulous jewellery. When the time comes to part ways, however, the jewels are ferociously defended by the women who own them. The women chosen as case studies for this book belonged mostly to the past early 20th century, a time when women lacked security, rights and even, for the most part, independence. In such a time, jewelry was seen as a source of security in case things went wrong, which they did for a lot of the women depicted in the book. Coming from, or marrying into, European and US aristocracy, these women were divested of a number of rights in the name of social form. For example, Marjorie Post bought a house from her own fortune and put it in her fourth husband’s name in order to make him feel more secure and confident. When the time came for a divorce, due to his increasing jealousy and possessiveness, however, she was unable to claim her right to the house and lost in the courts due mostly to her gender. The exchange of jewelry and expensive gifts was not one sided all the time, however. In the most unique and exciting case, the jewels went in both directions. This is the case of Edward VIII, the king who renounced the British throne, and Wallis Simpson. Their affair lasted for several years before they got married and their jewellery is unique because of the coded messages that were engraved into it. Mrs Simpson was not to be outdone by the Prince of Wales when it came to sending gifts on special occasions. From cigarette cases to cufflinks, she gave him any kind of jewellery that a man could get away with. Another, quite opposite royal couple chosen for description in the book is Maharani Sita Devi and the Maharaja of Baroda. Addicted to jewellery, the maharani convinced the maharaja to leave first his wife and eight children, and then India to move to Europe along with the famous Baroda jewellery. This constituted a theft to some extent because the jewels belonged to the family and the estate and not just one heir to the throne of Baroda. Due to this, the most famous pearls were recovered by the estate through a court case and the rest of the jewels were saved by the redoubtable maharani through re-settings into different pieces of jewellery by Cartier and Van Cleef and Arpels. The relationship between the couple, however, deteriorated and ended in divorce. Unable to afford the same lifestyle as she had been used to while she was married, the Maharani kept on buying more jewellery and running up debt to pay for them. Eventually, most of her jewellery was sold off at auction since she had used it as her only collateral for the loans. The writers go into a lot of detail while describing both the jewellery and the pains that the buyers went to to get and retain it. The authors of the book painstakingly recount the jewellery of the various famous women that they have chosen, down to all the transformations that most of the jewels went through in order for their owners to remain up-to-date with the trends of the time. For most of these women, the master jewelleer was Cartier, so the book reads, for a major part, like a history of the house. The jeweller’s willingness to accommodate and especially design pieces for its most lavish patrons undoubtedly had a lot to do with this loyalty. For some women though, the jewelleer of choice was Van Cleef and Arpels that was, by far, the more exciting jeweller with its experimentations in setting stones and designing jewelry that was more delicate and beautiful. The book, to some extent, gives an overview of 20th century history along with the history of the famous acquisitions of its subjects, but it could have been more nuanced than it is if more attention had been paid to the times than to each and every setting that some of the jewels went through in the course of their existence until they were sold off at a public auction by Sotheby’s or Christie’s because their owners could no longer afford their lavish lifestyles. The reviewer is a freelance columnist