Oh, just admit it. You’re watching Revenge, that Sunday night soap that takes place in the Hamptons. I started watching season one on Netflix after some women I know confessed their addiction, and even though I laughed at the melodrama, I got hooked enough to start watching the current season. I’m having as much fun analyzing the jewelry on Revenge as I did with The Good Wife.
If you haven’t watched but plan to (it’s also available on DVD
Here’s Ashley. In season one, she’s the necessary but disrespected right-hand woman for Victoria, wealthy and devious matriarch at the center of the drama. In season two, Ashley switches sides to the men in the family, working for head of the family business, Conrad Grayson, and dating Grayson, Jr., and thus moves up a notch.
Ashley is played by Ashley Madekwe, who has a fashion blog that reveals her love for… really big earrings. Which makes me wonder if they let Ashley choose her own wardrobe on this show. In the first season, she wears the boldest, wildest jewelry of any of the women. She’s sort of a would-be Samantha Jones of Sex & the City fame, wearing big pointy things that hint at the invisible daggers she’d like to use on all the wealthy people she has to kiss up to.
When she gains status in the family biz and moves into the media spotlight, her jewelry becomes more conservative. She’s wearing little pearl studs early in season two, before she gets confident enough to return to big, embellished hoops – still bold, less lethal.
The only other non-WASP, working-class, bold jewelry wearer on this show is Amanda… Well, she’s actually Emily but switched identities with the real Amanda who then became Emily… Oh, never mind. Amanda is deliciously slutty. The first time we see her she’s pole-dancing in an S&M ensemble. Then she moves to the Hamptons to stalk the real Amanda/Emily, her former cellmate. She always wears this heavy chain with a charm pendant dangling between her breasts. It’s a cryptic hint of her past, which only the real Amanda knows.
She also favors big earrings, having lots of big, very long hair to hide them. Unlike Ashley, who goes for geometric sculptural forms, Ashley’s earrings are always curvy, earthy and natural – like her.
Seeing what the women on this show wear from one scene to the next is a primary component of the guilty pleasure of Revenge, along with the interiors of their homes, several flavors of boy candy, shots of beach grass blowing in front of the cottage where Emily lives (reminds me of Nantucket where I once spent a summer) and aerial shots of the sprawling Grayson Manor.
Exactly how sprawling comes out when Conrad Grayson tells his estranged wife Victoria – played by the awesome Madeleine Stowe (a reason to watch right there) – that they should be able to live under one roof, since that roof happens to be 20,000 square feet. “Twenty-four thousand,” she says, then begins giggling hysterically. (She’s had a lot of cognac.) He laughs too. First and only moment I found myself actually liking these people, when they’re laughing at the absurd overabundance of their own lives.
I find myself laughing too. Example from season one: After getting busted for sleeping with Victoria’s husband, the character played by Amber Valletta (right) is chased by the Graysons’ henchman and falls in slow motion off a 5-story Manhattan building, landing beautifully dead on a cab parked below – an homage to that famous Life photo? But wait. It turns out she’s only in a coma, from which she awakens, looking lovely – but with amnesia. Did I mention she’s in bed in Victoria’s house, being fed lobster bisque by Victoria? Seriously.
In season two, it’s 9-month pregnant Amanda who falls to her apparent death (thanks to evil Victoria), winds up in a coma, then appears with baby, both beautifully intact. At this point, I didn’t even blink, suspension of disbelief officially frozen.
Okay, let’s look at their jewelry. Perhaps because she’s faking her identity as a squeaky-clean aristocrat and has to be careful to stay on cue, Emily’s jewelry is tasteful and subtle in season one. As she gets more comfortable in season two, her jewelry and decolletage grow increasingly bolder. But she remains, as her partner-in-revenge Nolan puts it, an impeccably-dressed sociopath.
Charlotte, mischievous and spoiled teenage Grayson daughter (Emily/Amanda’s half-sister, as it turns out) favors delicate, feminine necklaces and over-sized, colorful costume earrings. She stays well away from the diamond-and-pearl status jewels favored by her mother. (She’s daddy’s girl, at least until he finds out he’s not her daddy).
At the “Fire & Ice” engagement party, for example, Charlotte (left) wears chandelier-style danglers with her red gown while Emily opts for classical gold. That night, Emily also wears the beautiful pink diamond engagement ring from her toothsome fiancé, Daniel Grayson, on one hand and a gold starfish on the other.
Jewelry plays an important role in Victoria’s life. Her cheating husband spends the first few episodes trying to buy her back with diamond jewels. But the ones she treasures most are earrings from the love of her life, Emily’s father, whose death Victoria and her husband caused (thus, the REVENGE). After a flashback reveals this memory, we notice she wears these earrings when she’s particularly annoyed with her husband – which is often. But the most interesting story involves Victoria’s pearls. Being a classic WASP, Victoria wears pearls a lot. Usually some version of this:
Notice Madeleine’s eyes are brimming with tears, a state her character is in whenever she’s not smilingly delivering some kiss-of-death statement. (Her ability to morph from one extreme to the other probably has something to do with her Golden Globe nomination this year.) Note also the multi-strand pearls, carefully coordinated with her ladylike summer cardigan.
But the episode where I really noticed Victoria’s pearls was the one where, in the midst of the chaos, she runs into an old beau and falls into bed with him. This is Victoria earlier in that episode wearing her pearls like battle armor:
In the next scene, she’s facing her trauma like a good socialite by downing expensive liquor in a bar. Notice her pearls (like Victoria herself) have come undone, that is, they’re no longer knotted and they’ve grown a tassel that points seductively to her cleavage.
She runs into a hunky artist from her past who calls her “Vicky,” revealing that he knew her in her pre-socialite days. They have a torrid roll in his artist loft. But look! Her pearls are still on!
Here is Vicky/Victoria freshly emerged from bed. Notice the pearls draped over her shoulder, tousled like her hair.
That cell phone call she got in bed (half the drama on this show involves some kind of mobile device) draws her back to the soap opera that is her life. One last shot of Victoria, still wearing a sheet – but the pearls have been rearranged so she looks more like she’s wearing a strapless gown, her socialite mask falling back into place over the bedroom eyes.
Moral of this story: If you want to stay wealthy and powerful, never let your guard down and don’t take off your pearls in the loft of a struggling artist. Even if he does still have the portrait he painted of you 25 years ago.
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