'Just returned from Jaipur -- laden with wonderful strings of colour: peridots, rubies, sapphires, carnelian, moonstones, aquamarines . . ." read the hand-lettered invite to a showing of jewellery by designer Krystyne Romer Griffin. "Adornment vendor" is what Bergdorf Goodman execs prefer to call her, maybe because the pieces are too big and bold to simply be called jewellery.
Deep through the secret, twisty lanes of Rosedale (admittedly less fragrant and dusty than the secret, twisty lanes in Asia and Africa where Ms. Griffin trolls for her treasures) came 30 styling, privileged and connected Toronto women to view the booty. Lady Black of Crossharbour has long been a fan, though the timing was clearly not right this past week for a shopping trip. Some loyal clients, such as painter Margaret Priest and glitter girl Catherine Nugent, were out of town. There were, however, other Toronto art, society and literary names collected around Ms. Griffin's dining table, set with pearls spilling out of brandy snifters, from socialite Beverley Creed and artist Eve Gordon to movie publicist Prudence Emery and architect Shirley Blumberg. These are all women with the chutzpah and stature to wear Ms. Griffin's honkin' big necklaces. Many brought their husbands.
The select guests bought freely, designing and combining goodies with their artist/host that ranged in price from $350 for a single strand of gems to several thousand dollars for multiple strands or silver or gold crosses set with semi-precious cabochon stones. Each large piece is balanced by "positioning" beads. Ms. Griffin's quirky and generous sense of proportion is not what she calls the "two equidistant candlesticks on the mantel" kind of sedate balance you see so often in all forms of design in this city.
"I've found in Toronto," she says, "that the mother will buy the necklace and then buy a bracelet of the same for daughter. Also, sometimes the mother gets the gold, the daughters get the silver."
But that is as dishy as Ms. Griffin will get about her clients -- in jewellery, discretion is the most important part of the sale.
Architect Diane Bald, who along with hubbie Michael Budman of Roots forms one-half of a celebrity-magnet power couple, found the event most "intriguing and mysterious, adventurous, just like Krystyne herself. The stones tell a story, they have character."
Ms. Griffin's most famous local jewellery model, Louise Dennys, executive VP of Random House Canada and executive publisher at Knopf Canada, has been photographed around the world wearing Griffin pieces. Says Ms. Dennys by e-mail (she was on the town with Martin Amis this week): "She travels to the wildest, most out of the way places -- from the Siberian Sea to the African coasts to the desert souks (sometimes wearing African or Arab dress to pass more easily in the more remote bazaars, like a female Bruce Chatwin or 19th-century explorer) -- finding and trading for rare jewels and ancient silver beads . . . When she is working with them, giving them new life and new forms, she tosses them all around with delight and affection -- like 'candy' she will say, laughing."
Both Ms. Dennys and Ms. Griffin always top Toronto's best-dressed lists (many of which I've decreed myself, in previous job incarnations). Ms. Griffin's husband, Scott Griffin, used his shock-absorber fortune in 2000 to endow the Griffin Trust (now worth $3.2-million) and $80,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, and throws a bang-up dinner each year for the award ceremony. He also, it has oft been noted, looks like Robert Redford.
I arrived at the Griffin home (a spectacular ceiling, painted amber to comfort Ms. Griffin during a vicious bout of malaria, gorgeous textiles, and pieces from two lifetimes of travelling the world's back roads) last week after the buying women had left and was presented immediately with a glass of chilled tequila. Ms. Griffin, who at 63 hovers well over 6 feet tall in her ever-present heels, looped around my neck an almost floor-dragging amber necklace that she said had once belonged to a king of Ivory Coast.
Born an aristocrat in Vilnius, which was then part of Poland and is now the capital of Lithuania, Ms. Griffin moved to Montreal as a child, then returned as an adult to Paris, where she launched a fashion career scouring couture houses for the European buying arm of Eaton's. When she married Mr. Griffin in 1977, she moved to Toronto and helped launch the flagship Holt Renfrew. Then, as president of DWS Retail, she encouraged high-end boutiques to set up shop in Hazelton Lanes (Hermès, Courrèges). After another turn at Holt's introducing designer boutiques such as YSL, she ran the retail mall (with tenants such as Harrods et al) at Pearson airport's Terminal 3.
She and Mr. Griffin took off to Africa in 1996, and settled in Nairobi for two years, where as a volunteer with the African Medical and Research Foundation he organized medical air services and zipped about in his trusty Cessna.
Exploring the bazaars around the continent, Ms. Griffin found stunning ancient silver beads, Roman coins and 19th-century silver-studded black coral Muslim prayer beads. Called Yahudi beads (they were made by Jewish artisans), these beads can only be found for sale separately, as intact strands are always passed down family lines. Once she had scrubbed years of sand and camel dung off the abandoned beads, she combined the silver and coral artifacts from different centuries and cultures into necklaces and earrings that formed the basis of a very successful show at New York's Bergdorf Goodman. In Canada right now, Ms. Griffin works by commission only.
Since their return to a home base of Toronto, she and her husband have expanded their travels to Jaipur, India, where many fine gems of the world are sorted, graded, polished and sold by the gram, and where Ms. Griffin extended her tastes to wild colours in stones. (She is noted for wearing all black or all white so her adornments take centre stage.) Mexico is next on their game plan.
"There is no such thing as the vendor any more who does not know the value of what he has," Ms. Griffin says. That illusion, of plundering the markets for unidentified treasure, is over. The buying process, however, takes weeks, bellyfuls of tea, invitations to homes, elephant rides and patience, for the finest items are always pulled out at the last minute. In Toronto, Ms. Griffin is ahead of her time, agree fashion observers. Roslyn Griffith Hall, the stylist who is prepping Canadian idol Ryan Malcolm for the World Idol contest, loves Ms. Griffin's "strong woman look. The pieces look rich. She's taking the edge off the gaudy that often comes with big. They are pieces of polish and beauty, works of art."
Pink Tartan designer Ian Hylton gives her props for finding "the artisans of the continent long before they were in vogue. She is her own best muse."
Luckily for Ms. Griffin, the minimalist period is over. "Jewellery is very much the centre of fashion right now," says Barbara Atkin, fashion director at Holt Renfrew. "Collectible, artisanal , unique, crafty, tribal, ethnic. Not mass. Those are the key words. If you are going to wear a piece, it is to be noticed. That's Krystyne's style too."
Ms. Atkin finds only one fault with Ms. Griffin. "The pieces are heavy. We're all going to have to start travelling with steamer trunks again."