Hot Firecracker Ice And Silk

In Switzerland there are a few – not many, but a few – precision industrial weaving machines with the capability of creating beautiful silk fabrics with up to about fifteen different colours in the design of the fabric.

So we're talking not about printing onto the fabric various colours, but rather, weaving crystal-clear and precise patterns with different coloured silken threads. This sort of finished silk product is extremely expensive. Depending on the visual designs, some of these new silks are quite sensational.

Yet on the whole I don't like too many of these new-fangled things – well I'm talking about expensive things anyway with an old tradition to them. Sometimes more is not better. I really don't, for example, like the modern complicated styles of cutting diamonds. Yes yes I get the basic idea of so-called perfect symmetry 'hearts and arrows.' What's the other one – 'hearts on fire' or something. And there are others too. All departing through extra complication from the fully-developed American Standard 60/60 Marcel Tolkowsky cut. There's a reason for tradition and they're the ones who don't get it.

Then there is the 'Grand Complication' wristwatch thing too.

To me some of this stuff is a bit like George W.-speak: it's 'complexified' rather than really that advanced and complicated afterall.

This image is digitally rendered -
real life diamonds are much more exciting

And the same is true in the modern world of pop fashion sex idioms too: it's how much further, how much more absurd, how much more exaggerated. There is also the whole power overlay thing which to me seems all too equivalent to the current male world of politics and banking – 'waddya mean we have no clothes?! We're in charge, aren't we. You should be happy. Why aren't you happy. Do it my way. Every other way would be bad for you... And by the way, can we have another bailout?' ...The contradictions are too too numerous.

'Inability to resolve the stone's dispersive fire.' This is the key phrase to why overly-complicated cuts are wrong for diamonds. 'Inability to resolve' also includes 'imperfect or incomplete ability to resolve' – which is the result of too many facets and too many small edges, even when the stone itself is large.

D &G classic

A plain black silk cocktail dress when fitted properly is the peak of adult female elegance. A top-cut Tolkowsky brilliant is the paramount when it comes to jewelry. If you want some colour try a Russian Posad silk shawl as an accessory.

Silk gets hot when you put a little fire to it. What Prometheus really knew was to do with the fire in the ice. Let me tell you, when you get a really well-cut diamond, you turn it in the light and you can almost hear the snap crackle and pop of the dispersion: it's sharp, and hot, and snappy, not flashy. A good diamond is a firecracker, not merely a sparkler.