Collaborating with renowned couture bridal designer Kirstie Kelly, each of the wedding and engagement rings enables the unique spirit and beauty of its namesake Disney Princess through subtle style cues and delicately crafted designs.

Taking her expertise in bridal gowns and love of storytelling. Kirstie considers her collaboration with Disney and Mouawad a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to design an exquisite collection of fine jewelry that will be cherished for years to come.

The disney collection consists of engagement rings with matching wedding bands relates with classic tales. They are cinderella, snow white, belle, sleeping beauty, princess jasmine and ariel

19 million dollars of Mouawad diamond jewelry were used to adorn the models on the runway. Each masterpiece was individually selected by Mouawad to compliment the intricate designs and respective theme of each look. Models wearing Mouawad designs on the runway included Heidi Klum, wearing a superb matching diamond and emerald earrings and bracelet, Marisa Miller who modeled a gorgeous diamond and ruby suite at a value of $1 MM and Ana Beatriz Barros wearing a stunning diamond and yellow sapphire four piece suite featuring over 70 carats of gems.

The Mouawad Group
Mouawad, a name well known for haute joaillierie, is as celebrated for its extensive collection of unique diamonds as its cutting-edge design and retail philosophy. Founded in 1890, the company supplied important jewels to many European royal houses and wealthy individuals. Today Pascal Mouawad, US Director and fourth generation of the Mouawad family, continues that tradition in a modern way by adorning the necks, ears and wrists of today’s “royalty” — supermodels, singers, actresses and women of style from across the globe. Some of the famous faces that have been seen donning Mouawad include Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Giselle Bundchen, Heidi Klum, Karolina Kurkova, Adriana Lima, Tyra Banks, and Nicole Richie just to name a few.

Malaysian Designer Faisol Abdullah has created what could be the world’s most expensive Dress.
Valvued at $30 million, the masterpiece by Abdullah is adorned with 751 premium diamonds weighing over 1000 carats all intricately crafted by the renowned middle Eastern Jewelry, Robert Mouawad. Incidentally, Mouawad diamonds are the darlings of tinsel town divas like angelina jolie and nicole kidman.
Mouawad’s pear-shaped 70 carat diamond sets the focus for the maroon tafetta silk evening gown that also features a majestic 6-metre train.
Dubbed the “Nightingale of Kuala Lumpur”, only 500 handpicked privileged guests will get to view the fashion statement debut at the Mercedes-Benz STYLO Fashion Awards Gala on April 3 at teh KL Lake Gardens
ANd the best part of it all: STYLO International, the dress commissioner, will donate five percent of the sale price to a Gaza Fundraising initiative to do their bit for the economy.

“Designing {clothes for Bebe] inspired me so much” she said. ” I wanted to create an accessoru line that not only I would wear, but more importantly, my fans would wear. I read lots of comments on fashion blogs, twitter and Facebook about my line and I wanted to give the fans what they have been asking for”

Los Angeles-based Mouawad is known for his collaborations with heidi Klum and Erin Wasson, Nicole Richie and Jessica Simpson, among others.

“The celebrities are so involved in the process from design to promotion, and that is what makes the fans buy it,” he said. “House of Harlow 1961 is doing extremely well because it speaks about Nicole. The same will happen with Kim.”

Mouawad said kardashian’s line will be the most mass targeted in his portfolio, with the majority of the piceces retailing for less that $100. THe range is $25 to $250.

“We are not looking to bring high-end jewelry to the marketplace; we are targeting Middle America,” he said. “I see it in major department stores,those with 200 to 500 doors, and some specialty boutiques,”

Source – Pascal Mouwad Editorial Coverage

A group of scientists in California report the possibility of icebergs of diamond afloat in oceans of carbon on Neptune and Uranus. Natural diamonds are believed to have formed when carbon solidified under great pressure, at some point in the violent geological past of the earth. Attempts to reproduce these conditions in the laboratory have not completely failed and there is a thriving industry of ‘synthetic’ diamonds, with a market both for jewelry and industry.

Dr Jon Eggert of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and colleagues placed a small diamond, a tenth of a carat, under intense lasers and subjected it to pressures of millions of atmospheres and temperatures above 50,0000C. The result was a drop of melted diamond, kept liquid because of the pressure. When the pressure dropped to 11 atmospheres, diamond crystals formed and floated on the surface of the melt. As the pressure dropped, the temperature remained the same, but the diamond condensate became larger, and not sinking, but afloat. Diamond hence forms under these pressures and shows anomalous expansion when it freezes.

These kinds of pressures and temperatures are considered to exist within the core of the giant planets, Neptune and Uranus. These planets also consist of carbon to about 10 per cent. In the core, the carbon would be in liquid state and at a pressure of millions of earth atmospheres. The carbon that condenses in these conditions would crystalise as diamond and float like icebergs on the ocean of molten carbon, under pressure.

Allotropes of carbon
Diamond of course is pure carbon, the same as a piece of coal, or the graphite in our ‘lead’ pencils. Carbon has an atomic structure that makes it versatile both in combination with other elements, to form compounds, as well as with other carbon atoms, to form crystals.

The atoms of all elements consist of a massive, positively charged core, surrounded by tiny, negatively charged electrons, equal in number to the charge of the core. These electrons, which keep from falling into the core by whirling round, like planets around a sun, are arranged in ‘shells’, which become the most stable when they consist of eight electrons.

All elements then have a few extra electrons in the last shell, which then tries, through combination with other atoms, to achieve the numbers of two or eight. Carbon is thus able to mix and match, and can form versatile chemical forms, including the ‘ring’ and the ‘chain’ forms of organic chemistry, when it combines with other elements, or the different crystal forms, in the pure state.

These crystalline forms are called allotropes and in carbon, we have eight different forms – the structure-less, amorphous carbon like coal, the 2-D structure in sheets, which is graphite and is easily deformed, the very hard 3-D structure of diamond, a hexagonal structure that we find in meteorites and then the structures of spheres and cylinders, the buckyballs and buckytubes.

The diamond structure, the rarest of natural forms is the iridescent, very hard form, used as a gem stone, as an industrial abrasive and in electronics for its special heat-conducting and electric properties.

Synthetic diamond
Which allotropic form carbon takes when it solidifies depends on the conditions. When soot forms, it is usually the amorphous form. For graphite, there is need for high temperatures, when the carbon atoms form into sheets. Depositing from the vapour can result in balls and tubes, the Bucky Fullerenes. But for the 3-D, ‘cubic’ form of diamond, we need tremendous pressures, which may have existed when the rocks condensed and formed on the earth or may have existed in meteorites, which also contain diamonds.

Normal crystals are produced by melting the substance and allowing the melt to cool slowly, usually in the form of a cone, where the vertex provides a pole, from which the crystal can begin to form. This cannot work with diamond, because when diamond is heated, we don’t get melted diamond but melted graphite, and when it cools, what forms is just graphite.

High temperatures, great pressure
For diamonds, we need the melt under tremendous pressure, which also implies very high temperatures. Attempts to create these conditions have been made since 1797, when it was discovered that diamond was nothing but carbon. Several well-known attempts are on record, of dissolving carbon in molten metals and then rapidly freezing the solvent. The pressure created by the solidification was expected to squeeze the carbon into diamond. Similar innovative methods were tried, with success reported, but not replicated right till the 1940s and 50s.

They were able to reach temperatures of 3,5000C and pressures of about 35,000 atmospheres. But they were able to actually create diamond grains only in 1954, with an arrangement to reach more than 1,00,000 atmospheres and a temperature over 2,0000C.

The first gem-quality diamonds were created in 1971, and these were found to be ‘nitrogen doped’, which gave them the yellow tint of natural yellow diamonds. It was possible to limit the nitrogen and achieve colourless diamonds, but the effort was too costly to be worth it. The methods have been refined into a series of HPHT (high pressure, high temperature) methods, with steadily better results.

courtesy
Deccan Herald

The dawning of The Age of Aquarius saw the rising of the Berlin Wall, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the massacre of My Lai, and IRA terrorism in Northern Island. Let the sun shine in, indeed. The laser is invented. Telstar, the first telecommunication satellite, goes up. Yuri Gagarin is the world’s first astronaut. Cable TV, the first heart transplant, Valium and the VCR rise on the horizon. The CIA cons America into the Vietnam War. The Beatles become the bards and troubadours of the age, not to mention its most telling voice. Free Love, drugs, Hippies, student riots, psychedelics and war protests become the daily diet. Someone brings up the fact that smoking may be dangerous.

The Do-Your-Own-Thing credo of the 60s transformed the world of jewelry design by exponentially exploding the factor of individualism far beyond the parameters set in the 50s. Creativity expanded like matter from the Big Bang and filled the jewelry universe with legions of creative artisans marching to the beat of their own drums. The major difference was that these artisans not only could design their own jewelry, but had the talents and expertise to manufacture and market it as well. Experimentation with shape, form and texture was rampant. Individual craftspeople, men and women alike, were encouraged to pour energy into their own visionary and nonrepresentational pieces. As an interesting sidebar, this liberation of creative energy encouraged consumers to unfetter their own individual tastes from whatever vestigial conventions bound them, and express themselves freely.

And those consumers were out in droves. New money and new crime hit the streets at the same time. The good jewelry was kept in the vault and the fun jewelry was worn in the open. As funky as the Carnaby Street clothing that helped inspire it, the jewelry of the times was totally off-the-wall. Fashion became a hip, witty, animated cartoon, all fun and fancy, with conventions about daytime and eveningwear summarily tossed out the window. Leading this Mardi Gras were cheap materials, neon colors, Mother Nature stylized into abstract patterns, cabochons in textured mounts, and animal motifs studded with gems. Brooches were done as garlands, leaves and flowers. Gold that was chiseled, reeded, hammered, corded, plaited or twisted made the scene. The great design houses got the message and responded accordingly. Wild animals, spiky fish, flowers and leaves, starbursts, explosions, flaming stars, cascades of large and voluminous gemstones in jagged clusters all replaced the soft round curves of the Fifties.

Large gemstones no longer dominated, but became subordinate to the designs that supported them. The new freedom sent traditional taste and fashion packing. The heavy styles of the 40s and the hipster styles of the 50s morphed into a multitude of textures, forms and materials. However, diamonds were still numero uno, and the balanced asymmetrical look of the period was helped by brilliant-, pear- and marquise- cut stones. The day had no lack of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and garnets. Turquoise crashed the party of expensive gems and gained wide popularity. Colored stone beads took their place among all the gold, diamonds and precious stones. India’s influence on design was starting to be felt in a big way. Chromatic psychedelics dominated color schemes. Jewelry was worn with abandonment and in abundance. Tiaras were out and parures of matching jewels lost favor, but demi-parures of selective pieces were still worn. Consumer creativity mixed and matched the lines of all the major designers.

Earrings were wild and wonderful, precisely because they did not take themselves all that seriously. Abstract, asymmetrical and whimsical, they were done in every color, texture, shape and material. The market saw them in gold, diamonds and seashells. They were rounded, domed or buttoned, decorated in mabé and baroque pearls, cabochon corals and turquoises, or in an extravagance of clustered and cascading gems. Gold was textured, plaited, woven and corded.

Chokers, bibs and short necklaces in general were the public’s whim. Spiky, abstracted hanging pendants of pear-shaped diamonds, agate, crystal aggregates or baroque pearls usually adorned them. They also displayed marquise-cut diamonds and colored stones as stylized leaves or flower heads. Other necklaces had abstract pendants of textured gold and diamonds, or crystals encaged in gold work, suspended from ribbons. The look was dynamic, jagged, broken, and layered, with plenty of depth and volume. Rubies, sapphires and emeralds consorted with diamonds. Colored beads were twisted around gold beads. Rivières of marquise-cut diamonds were set vertically to each other.

Bracelets were done as flexible, gem-set bands or rigid bangles, randomly studded with diamonds of various cuts, or with wavy bands of diamonds. Contrast was a big statement. Entwined or plaited ribbons of gemstones in different hues became big as accents. It was not uncommon to see course-set baguette diamonds entwined with a line of cushion, pear-, or marquise-cut colored stones. Another big draw were brightly enameled animal bangles set with cabochon-cut or faceted precious and semi-precious stones.

Solitaire rings lost ground to the three-dimensional rings of clustered stones. The outstanding look of the time was a large central stone raised above a cluster of other gems that flocked under it in a splintered effect. Pear- and marquise-cut gems were usually employed for the look. Meanwhile, cabochon-cut gems were encaged in gold work or surrounded by small diamonds. Textures duplicated effects from nature, like moonlight on the water. Natural landscapes, in effect, were being done in gems and metals. The Boule ring also gained favor, while ballerina mounts for diamonds were seen everywhere.

The three-ring circus revelry that defined the decade naturally fell apart. The lunatic clothes, the loony-tune mores, the grandiose adolescent rebellion, the entire bacchanalian abandonment of the 60s ended when the oil taps in the Middle East were turned off, ushering in the recession of the early 70s and, inevitably, Childhood’s End.

The first color TV transmissions have a more lasting effect on the American memory than the Korean War. George Jorgenson’s sex-change operation gives comedians enough material to last for months. REM sleep and the double Helix of the DNA are discovered. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin make the world a little safer for kids when they invent the polio vaccine. Artificial Intelligence and Disneyland are born in the same year. South Vietnam refuses to unify with North Vietnam….uh, oh. The pill is invented, giving women control over their bodies. The Soviet Union wakes America up to the space race when it launches Spuntnik. Mary Leakey finds a 1.8 million year old human skeleton, proving that we’ve come a long way, baby. Elvis and Rock ‘n’ Roll lead teenagers down the merry road to Hell, at least according to their parents. Reddi-Whip, Coffee-Mate, Swanson’s frozen TV dinners, M&Ms and McDonalds assault the American palette. Peanuts and Barbie make their debut. Brylcream, Mad Magazine and Silly Putty share the same decade, which is wonderful to contemplate. Ed Sullivan becomes our guru. TV bores into the American brain while Hula Hoops reduce the American waistline. Cadillac tailfins are profligate and magnificent.

The Fifties, like June, were busting out all over. Privation, denial and discipline were past. It was time to play, time to indulge. The economic and industrial growth of the post-war years spurred the determination to rebuild after the conflict, and led to the buoyant spirit of the decade. Television connected the world, the rescinded border restrictions encouraged travel, and cars meant mobility. The comfortable middle class and the newly rich were looking for jewelry that kept pace with the tempo of the times. They wanted color, they wanted vibrancy, they wanted energy and originality. Creativity and individuality were the catchwords of the period and took firm hold.

Design of the time favored the free, light, mobile, simple, essential, and functional. This freewheeling temper expressed itself in its willingness, among other things, to experiment with various design styles. The United States led the fashion, while the Italians put their own stylish spin on things and in the meantime stimulated the growth of Italian mass-produced jewelry. In France, Chanel reopened and brought out the two-piece suit, properly worn with gold jewelry or strings of pearls. Dior and other Parisian designers created the feminine woman of the times, giving her a small waist, rounded shoulders, puffed sleeves, a heart-shaped neckline and fancy hair. Opulence found its way back into clothing as well as into jewels. Even tiaras had returned. Celebration was in the air.

Rules still applied, but they were friendly. Daytime wear suggested simple gold bracelets and necklaces done in tubular chains or corded wires, with fringes, pleated motifs and woven patterns in gold predominating. Eveningwear was elaborate, if not spectacular. Parures of diamonds and colored precious stones graced women of fashion everywhere, while platinum and white gold were the settings for garlands of brilliant-cut, pear-shaped, marquise- and baguette-cut diamonds. Cultured pearls made a comeback in a big way, now being worn in graduated double and triple rows. Turquoises, multicolored citrines, topazes and coral were the leaders in semi-precious stones. The precious stones of note were emeralds, rubies and sapphires. These were often used in conjunction with the undisputed star of the decade, diamonds. As motifs, all sorts of flora and fauna were universally popular, especially in brooches. Mammal, fish and bird designs were the big sellers, while the major motifs remained flowers and leaves. The ribbon and bow motif of the 50s survived, but in lighter versions, along with volutes, helixes, spirals and turbans. Bejeweled clips and brooches decorated the elaborate hairstyles that complemented the opulent evening gowns of the Fifties. Tiaras were reincarnated as inverted necklaces set on stiff metallic structures fashioned in swags, florals and leaves. The diverse hairstyles of the period also allowed both for long pendant earrings and blunt little ear clips. Gold was big for earrings. Gold Creole earrings and boules of gold studded with gemstones adorned many an ear. Day wear had short earrings done as leaves, scrolls, turbans, spirals, clusters, helixes and flower heads set with diamonds. The same motifs applied for eveningwear, only redone sumptuously in diamonds and lavish precious gemstones. Pearls were seen either in solo drops or as enhancements for other gems.

Women wore necklaces with the casual regularity that men wore hats. Appropriate for both day and eveningwear, necklaces were short, often chokers, and fashioned in swags and garlands of plain or corded wire. Flat mesh ribbon necklaces were done in plaited wire or wire twisted to form slim torsades decorated with diamonds and colored stones. Also seen were bib necklaces with pointed or rounded ornaments of articulated gold linking. Either that, or elaborate corded wireworks studded with gems. Often the design tended to a row of lancolated leaves or dart-shaped motifs graduated in size from the center. Decorating the sides of necklaces, and detachable for use as brooches or clips, were shell, spirals, turbans and bows in fretted gold. These also found their way onto diamond bands worn for evening. The motif of draped diamonds, tied in the center or on the side in informal knots, and even decorated with tassels and cascades of gemstones, abounded. Torsades of small pearls were decorated with gemstones or with coral. Ropes of pearls were done in graduated rows. Torsades of gemstones, or entwined ribbons of diamonds and gemstones were popular. These were, on many occasions, decorated with tassels, sprays, clusters, cornucopias and cascades of more diamonds and colored stones.

Clips were still sported in the Fifties by fashionable women, but brooches had an absolute heyday. Gold embellished with gemstones took the shapes of animals, flowers and leaves. Wildly exotic flowers were set in gold and elaborately decorated with diamonds and gems. Ribbons and bows were entwined with leaves, ferns and feathers crafted from diamonds and precious stones. In this jaunty atmosphere naturalism and abstraction came together in a combustion of wonderful designs. Animals were much beloved, with cute and cuddly ones worn for daytime, and noble, proud ones displayed for evening.

Bangles were big. Literally. Gold hoops holding charms were worn during the day. Also suitable for day were wider bangles of corded wire with bombé-shaped fronts of clustered gems. Strings of coral, turquoise and semiprecious beads were used in the same way, as were bands of five or more rows of pearls secured with a flower head clasp. The same designs and motifs prevailed in the evening, but with larger three-dimensional designs using costlier gems and metals. The more expensive tickets were done in naturalism rather than abstraction, usually taking the form of wild and exotic animals. Also predominating were swags, scrolls, flower heads, fans, turbans, baguette- or circular-cut stones.

The jeweled wristwatch found its way into almost every woman’s trousseau. They were worn on the wrist during the day and over the evening glove at night. Their bracelets were done in gold mesh or twisted wire. Their small circular dials were sometimes concealed by jeweled hinged covers in the shape of a dome, turban, scroll, flower head or rosette. If the dials were not covered, they were decorated usually in borders of gold, precious stones and diamonds.

Massive rings with curved and rounded forms negated the angularity of the previous decade. Though huge, they did away with wide metallic surfaces, often set instead with a delicate reticulation encaging the stones. For instance, large bombé bezels often appeared as either stones or gold wires. Turban shapes were popular, embellished with gems or a larger, central stone. Variations on that shape were scrolls, helixes and volutes. The truncated conical bezel of gold wire was quite the thing, as were the claw-foot settings for large precious stones set between scrolled diamond shoulders. The Crossover Ring never went out of fashion, and was presented in the shape of elaborate scrolled leaf motifs or volutes in gold and gemstones. Another consistent seller was the Cluster Ring, crafted with pearls or colored stones bordered with diamonds or flower heads.

For most who are old enough to remember them, the Fifties were surrealism personified. From Elvis to Eisenhower, it was the reeling roller coaster that led to the magic carpet ride of the Sixties.

Say hello to nuclear fission, the computer, the microwave oven, the Xerox copier and the Polaroid. The United Nations is born, Israel is reborn, and Gandhi is assassinated. LSD is discovered and the French involve themselves in Vietnam, two events that will reshape the America psyche in about 25 years. Blood transfusions are introduced and Pan Am announces the first round-the-world flight. World War II ends, Germany is divided, India and Pakistan make war, not love. Mao seizes power in China. All is not bleak, though. The Great Depression is finally over.

Paris, as always, is the catalyst. The 1937 International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life takes Art Deco’s geometrics and floral stylizations and gives them a dramatic, sculptural twist that leads to a new movement in jewelry design. As with WWI, WWII pulled rank and co-opted the world’s platinum supplies, leaving designers to their own devices. Designers rose to the occasion, as expected. Suddenly there appeared assertive, sculptured pieces using rose, white and green gold in conjunction with yellow gold. The new, three-dimensional look took life in scrolls and raised domes. Rubies and sapphires were accented with the muted colors of citrine, tourmaline, amethyst and aquamarine, which were around in abundance. The motifs of the movement included ballerinas, bows, large link chains, and rings with fantastically scrolled shanks.

Nothing spurs ingenuity so much as a good war. Faced with destruction, privation and hardship, people adapt to survive. Paradoxically, adverse situations even cause them to thrive. The Retro movement in jewelry was just such a case of adaptability leading to triumph. In the same way that Art Deco was Art’s reproach to the obscenity of World War I, Retro was its retort to the waste of World War II.

French house Van Cleef & Arpels, exhibiting their fine jewels at the 1939 World’s Fair, opted to keep them in the U.S. at the outbreak of the war. U.S. designers were greatly influenced by what they saw, including bracelets with ribbons of hexagonal lines, centered on flowery clusters of fine gemstones fastened with heavy clasps containing gems set en suite with the band. In Paris, the house of Cartier responded to the German defeat of France in apt fashion. It showed its unbowed spirit by creating its fanciful animalier style. Animal figures in gold, studded with gems and enhanced by shining enamel, reaffirmed the power of joy and beauty in the face of the Nazi occupation. In particular, its Bird in the Cage and Freed Bird jewelry items were done as a slap in the face to the Vichy regime.

Retro rose as Deco fell. Deco’s one-dimensional flatness became Retro’s chunky, sculptured three-dimensionality. There were raised rectangles, domes, baroque scrolls and gemstone bands. Gold and gems were thus consolidated for easier transport during dangerous times. Because the war effort cut off supplies, jewelry manufacturers used what gems and metals were in stock. Sprays and bunches of diamonds were bound loosely with flowing scrolls, plaques, twists and spirals of diamond baguettes. The Spanish Crown Jewels became a casualty of war, though others used this to their advantage. The jewels were broken up and their stones put on market. American dealers bought many of them and had the old-fashioned mine cuts redone in modern cuts, employing the talents of those European cutters who had fled the war overseas.

One of the few nice things about a war is that it ends. The growing, upper-middle class of the post-war period reveled in its new prosperity. After years of deprivation it was hungry for opulence. It longed to strut its stuff, and did. A remarkably ostentatious use of gemstones marked the period, and for good reason. While mining in South America for electronic-grade mica, feldspar, quartz and lithium minerals to fuel the needs of war, the powers that be inadvertently uncovered hundreds of gemstone mines in Brazil. Eureka is too small a word for what followed. A cornucopia of gems poured out of the mines of South America, including citrine, topaz, kunzite, chrysoberyl, aquamarine and amethyst. Tourmaline and rubellite were discovered in vast quantities. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and turquoises became the favorites of the period, but the unchallenged star of the day was peridot, which found its way into numerous modern pieces of the time. Faceted gems retained their popularity, but there was concurrently a big revival of interest in beads and cabochons. All of these were popular when mounted in independent prong settings that made a smoothly continuous band, or jumbled together in a bouquet of color. The new gold alloys mixed with copper and silver turned out lovely new shades of gold in pink, green, and white as well as in the accustomed yellow.

Though created from the crisis of war, Retro did not immediately pass with the conflict. It hung on a few years. Many interpreted this period as a mere transition between Art Deco and the styles of the 1950s, but it took François Curiel to realize what had been afoot. Curiel, the head of Christie’s jewelry department in New York, first categorized this movement in the 1970s. He saw the pattern that those living through it had been close enough to miss. To make it easier for his customers to approach the jewelry of that period he gave it the label, Retro. Soon, valuable and expensive pieces of the period were showing up at prestigious auction houses. Retro, to be sure, was a genuine movement. It had a nice run until shortly after the war, and then passed its crown to the glitzy Fifties.