In the '80s pop star Madonna incorporated religious imagery into her music and her lifestyle, appearing in her videos wearing rosary beads and crosses as necklaces and sparking debates about offending religion. Together with ex-votos, rosary beads are actually the religious items that appeared the most on the runways, often donned as necklaces and bracelets. But in yesterday's post (linked with the fashion and religion ones we have focused on this week as the exhibition "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination" opened at the Met Museum's Costume Institute) we looked at a rather unusual way to use rosary beads – employing them for embroideries.
New York-based interior designer, antique fabric expert, collector and style icon Iris Apfel suggests us an alternative way to wear them (that we mentioned a while back in another post). In the exhibition "Rare Bird of Fashion" (2005-2006, The Costume Institute at the Met Museum), Apfel included a look in which she accessorised a tunic by Chado Ralph Rucci and Gianfranco Ferré's trousers with a long wooden necklace. The necklace was actually made with 20th century European articulated wood and metal hands and late 19th century South American wood rosary beads.
If you want to recreate the necklace, you may be happy to know that it is not too difficult to find wall rosaries in antique markets, second-hand shops or on the Internet (same thing for the articulated wooden hands). You can use one or two hands, depending from the weight you can carry around, but long wall rosaries allow to create interesting motifs when wrapped around the neck.
So get those creative juices flowing, save, recycle, repurpose, create and style your piece. And, while you're at it, don't forget to say a prayer.
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