ADORNMENT AS RITUAL

Perhaps adornment has never been frivolous. 

We have been decorating ourselves for an astonishingly long time. 

Long before the jewel box. Before the vanity. Before goldsmiths and gemstones and mirrors and fashion, human beings were collecting shells, piercing them, carrying them across great distances, and wearing them. 

More than one hundred thousand years ago, someone chose an object from the natural world and decided to place it on the human body. 

I keep thinking about that. 

Because it means the desire to adorn ourselves is ancient. 

And I wonder if what we are doing now is really so different. 

There is a particular moment in getting dressed when we move beyond necessity. The body is covered. We could stop. 

But we don't. 

We choose the earrings. 

We put on the ring. 

We reach for a particular necklace. 

We add scent. Color our lips. Arrange our hair. Choose the shoes that make us stand differently. Sometimes we are simply making ourselves beautiful. 

I think beauty is reason enough. 

There is pleasure in adornment. Sensuality. Vanity. Play. The sheer delight of something sparkling against skin or the weight of a beautiful ring on the hand. 

I have never understood why these pleasures are so often dismissed as superficial. Human beings have been seeking beauty for as long as we have evidence of being human.

But adornment has rarely been only about beauty. 

Across cultures and across thousands of years, the things we have placed on our bodies have said something. 

I belong here. 

I have achieved this. 

I love this person. 

I worship this god. 

I am protected. 

I am grieving. 

I am married. 

I have power. 

Remember me. 

Jewelry has identified rank and family, wealth and allegiance. It has accompanied the dead. Amulets have been worn for protection. Precious materials have been offered to gods. Objects have marked marriages, initiations, victories, mourning and passage from one stage of life into another. 

We have continually used adornment to make the invisible visible. 

And somewhere inside all of that is ritual. 

Not necessarily ritual in the formal sense. 

I mean the small, repeated acts through which we change our relationship to ourselves. I know this feeling. 

There are days when putting on a particular piece of jewelry isn't simply the final step in getting dressed. 

It changes something. 

The shoulders move back. 

The posture changes.

Something that was quiet comes forward. 

I have seen this in other women too. 

There are objects we reach for when we need to remember who we are. Or perhaps who we are becoming. 

I find that fascinating because it raises the question of where the transformation actually occurs. Does the object change us? 

Do we change ourselves through the object? 

Or does the ritual of choosing it create a doorway between the two? 

I don't know. 

But I do believe that intention changes an experience. 

The same ring can be absentmindedly slipped onto a finger, or deliberately chosen before walking into a room where you intend to take up more space. 

The material hasn't changed. 

And yet the experience of wearing it has. 

Perhaps this is why adornment has remained with us for so long. 

We have always understood, consciously or not, that identity is not entirely fixed. It can be expressed. 

It can be declared. 

It can be played with. 

It can be summoned. 

Sometimes we adorn the person we already are. 

And sometimes we adorn ourselves toward the person we are becoming. There is something almost alchemical about that. 

A piece of metal. A stone pulled from the earth. A human body. An intention.

Separate things brought together until the experience becomes something none of them quite was on its own. 

Maybe that is why I am so drawn to making jewelry. 

I am interested in beauty, certainly. 

I love beautiful things. 

But I am even more interested in that moment when beauty becomes participation. When the person wearing the object brings something of herself to it. 

When choosing what to put on becomes more than decoration. 

When adornment becomes ritual.