In conjunction with Pitti Immagine, the annual world preview of clothing and accessory collections for the winter season held in the city, GIA Florence hosted an afternoon of open discussion with an exhibition entitled ‘Jewelry and Fashion Through the Ages’.   The school had been filled with costumes from diverse periods in history showing various fashion styles, which in turn had been paired with examples of period jewelry, borrowed for the occasion from a local Italian jeweler.

The collection represented the ‘roaring twenties’ with two fun ‘flapper’ dresses, originals dating 1900 and 1922, dressed with a string of simple white pearls, the classic accompaniment of the period. A beautiful blue velvet dress dated 1700 was teamed with a coral necklace from the Victorian period dating between 1837 and 1901.

During this period romantic designs, hearts, flowers and bows in turquoise and coral were extremely popular, small diamonds only started to appear as diamonds were discovered in Africa in the late 1800's (1867-1869).  This style was also demonstrated with an unusual angel head necklace. The medieval period was represented with a velvet green tunic dress, which appeared in Franco Zeffirelli’s film of the Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet (1961).

The Victorian jewelry on display also included a gold necklace with an enamel mosaic on glass dating 1870 - 1880 from Rome, a diamond broach (1859) from Florence and another from Venice dating back to the  beginning of the 19th century.

On campus G.G. students found particularly interesting a piece from the art nouveau period dated 1837, showing a female head representation, a shell cameo, demonstrating that aesthetic designs were often more important than the value of the materials used in this period (1890-1915).