A Vintage Brooch with a difference – three ways to wear

A Vintage Brooch with a difference – three ways to wear

Vintage brooch - dress clip

Have you seen a dress clip? These are unusual pieces of  Vintage Jewellery which originated in the 1920s art deco era and were worn up until about the 1950s.  The nice thing about these is that there is three pieces of Jewellery in the one brooch. To look at this at first it seems like a nice but standard art deco diamante brooch. Turn it over and you can see the difference – the two halves unclip and are removed from a base plate.

dress clip from rear

The two clip halves of the vintage brooch are worn as a pair on a dress or cardigan – often at the neckline. If you place a clip on either side of a neckline it will make the shape more square than round. Naturally a square shape to necklines suited the art deco ear as anything angular was popular.

The example of a dress clip brooch shown in these pictures is costume jewellery set with marcasites. you can find examples set with diamante and some of the nicest ones are made of silver. Other Dress clip brooches are made so that the base plate is studded with stones and can be worn as a brooch at the same time as the clip. Look out for ones in the shapes of flowers and animals – quite good fun to wear and dating from circa 1950s

Three parts of dress clip

Many Dress clip brooches were made by Coro who used the term “Duette” for these . Strictly it is only a Duette if it was made by Coro but the term often gets applied to any Dress clip brooch. If the word Duette appears on the back of the brooch it will have been made by Coro as they patented the term.

I think that the dress clip brooch is over due a fashion revival – buy now whilst they are still relatively cheap. There is usually one or twop available in my shop and I will be looking out for more.

Two Clips