Turquoise Treasure

For those after a quick fashion fix, look no further than top colour turquoise. The it colour for 2010 conveniently survives into Spring/Summer 2011 giving any purchase solid staying power.

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Party time turquoise:  Helena Bonham Carter at the Moet British Independent Film Awards earlier this month. Gucci's gorgeous SS11 ruffle dress.

Perambulate in style: Catwalk Kenzo vs Sidewalk Ocabini. Wrap up warm in Ocabini's cashmere poncho. For an instant fix try our hand woven chiffon cashmere scarf. Accessorise with CA4LA degrede fur hat, YSL flower earrings, Amet & Ladoue ruched scarf, Kara Ross snake braided chain bracelet, Shelpers hand made inlay cowgirl boots, DSquared trousers.

Loren Beven, Kerala 3, 2002
Acrylic on canvas  1.47 x 1.17m

 Opaque and blue-to-green, turquoise is the birthstone of the month of December. Of ancient appeal and among the first gems to be mined; a gold serpent bracelet set with turquoise was found in a pharaoh's tomb. Nowadays, good turquoise is hard to find. Many historic mining sites have been depleted, few still worked. Small-scale and in remote locations, most are worked by hand with little or no mechanization. Ocabini's cashmere is made much the same way.

 Brought to Europe through Turkey from the mines in Persia in the 17th century, its name derives from the French turques. Aztecs knew it as chalchihuitl. Serpent imagery occurs throughout Mesoamerican religious iconography; the double headed serpent turquoise mosaic in the British Museum is thought to have been worn on ceremonial occasions as an ornament, a sweeping statement necklace.
 
 Snakes have a habit of shedding their skins, a kind of reinvention that led the ancients to see it as a power of renewal and transformation. Many move freely between water, earth and the forest canopy, cementing their symbolic role as intermediaries between the layers of the cosmos: sky, earth and underworld.

 Hermes, Greek god and guide to the Underworld, is a popular patron busy minding sailors, shepherds and cowherds, orators and wit, literature and poets. His symbols include the tortoise, rooster and caduceus, a short staff entwined by two serpents.