Thank you to The Adventurine for this beautiful story about Croghan's Jewel Box!
Read “A Jewelry Postcard from Croghan’s in Charleston” by Caroline Dweck
If you haven’t heard about the incredible online magazine carefully curated by Marion Fasel, you are in for a treat. We’ve been fans of The Adventurine for many years!
As the original editor of the jewelry column for InStyle Magazine for almost 2 decades, Marion tantalized and educated a general public that was interested mostly in fashion. Her interviews, her picks, her knowledge, jumped off the page elegantly and made jewelry lovers out of the ready to wear buyer. It was quite ground breaking at the time actually!
We were lucky enough to be in the audience when Marion and her editorial ‘partner in bling’ Penny Proddow, were featured speakers at one of the very first Couture Jewelry Shows in the early 90’s.
The Couture Show was the first of its kind. An elegant, invitation only event where retailers were chosen for an all expense paid trip to a beautiful luxury resort and were entertained by exciting luxury brands as well as top magazine editors, the likes of InStyle, Town & Country, Veranda, and such! If there was one person on the planet that this idea of a free trip to buy jewelry and be in the company of such luxury for 3 days it was Mary Ramsay! She could hardly believe that we would be included. She couldn’t wait to pack her bags and plan her jewelry wardrobe for the parties. Nothing would keep her away including the fact that we could hear in our head, George Ramsay, in his best engineering practical voice advise her posthumously…“Mary, you know that a trip where you are expected to buy jewelry is not really free…don’t you? I need to teach you about the economic concept of no free lunch.” None of that could deter her, but I digress!
At one of those very early Couture Shows, Marion and Penny had just written With This Ring: The Ultimate Guide to Wedding Jewelry—which still sits on my bookshelf and is still relevant.
Clearly they had a ball writing this wedding jewelry guide. They were charming, interesting and passionate about their musings. It has practical advice as well as some inside scoop on hollywood stars and their engagement rings. We loved their talk and we loved them! But oh my…we really loved the party given by InStyle Magazine after the book signing.
They filled the pool with giant pink floating balls and served Pink Champagne (way before sparking Rosé was a thing!) They had Cosmopolitans because everything was Sex and the City back then. And they even washed the backdrop of Camelback Mountain in pink! It was absolutely fabulous and these Charleston Girls had never seen anything like it. We were used to Hamby sandwiches and a few smilax vines hangin’ from the chandeliers at South Carolina Hall…This was so over the top!
We have had our eye on Marion Fasel ever since! She has gone on to write no less than 8 fabulous books! While we were in NYC this summer, we invited her over for a drink to see what Croghan's had happening for the fall.
She was out of town, but graciously sent her writer, Caroline Dweck daughter of famed jewelry designer Steven Dweck, to our tea party. We loved meeting her and we appreciate her lovely story on The Adventurine about Croghan’s on our behalf! We are just tickled to be included, and we think Mary Ramsay is looking down with visions of pink dancing in her head!
