FASHION Magazine

With so many press and wealthy clients in Paris for the haute couture shows, many of the luxury jewelers in the Place Vendome are using the occasion to launch new collections. So off I went to Van Cleef & Arpels to see their new Zips. It was the Duchess of Windsor (the sometimes scandalous, always stylish legendary Wallis Simpson) who first suggested in 1938 that the house craft a zipper necklace in precious materials, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that technology caught up with the duchess’s imagination. By then, Wallis was over it. And though her character is seen wearing a Zip in The King’s Speech, the real duchess never did.