Florals on a man are never accidental. In 19th-century jewelry, floral brooches were often made en tremblant, with blossoms mounted on tiny springs so they would quiver as the wearer moved. That small vibration is where jewelry begins to cross into performance: no longer simply precious, but animated, theatrical, and alive.

Whimsy, for Paul Tazewell, is not decoration for decoration’s sake. It is a way of introducing personality, surprise, and narrative into a look without sacrificing elegance. A Fred Leighton monocle bulldog brooch does that immediately: it arrives with humor, but also with a kind of old-world eccentricity. Whimsy, in his hands, is not the opposite of sophistication. It is what keeps sophistication from becoming stiff.

For Paul Tazewell, the celestial is tied to magic: the glimmer of transformation, the romance of light, and the theatrical possibility of becoming something more. It is an idea that runs through costume as much as jewelry. That is what Tazewell responds to: jewelry and clothing working together to create transformation. Not just dressing for the occasion, but dressing for the spell.

The snake has never been a neutral symbol. Across mythology, jewelry, and dress, it has carried ideas of eternity, danger, wisdom, romance, and renewal. For Tazewell, that symbolism is not abstract. “The beautiful thing about fashion is that you are always recreating who you are,” he says. The result is less about taming the motif than feeding it: clothing and jewelry in conversation with transformation itself.

Left: Unknown artist/maker (Cretan), illuminator, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles