AuctionsDec 18, 2025
Audemars Piguet Reclaims Historic Pocket Watch at AuctionIt purchased the “Grosse Pièce,” an ultra-complicated Audemars Piguet pocket watch from the ‘20s, for a record-breaking price at Sotheby’s.
IndependentsJul 21, 2017
Kenneth Jay Lane, King of Costume Jewelry, Dies at 85
The designer’s jewelry adorned the world’s most glamorous women.
Kenneth Jay Lane died in his sleep Wednesday night or Thursday morning, at his home in New York.
New York--Kenneth Jay Lane died in his sleep Wednesday night or Thursday morning in New York, the company’s Executive Vice President, Chris Sheppard, confirmed to National Jeweler. He was 85.
Over his career, Lane’s creations adorned the world’s most glamorous women, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, noted fashion editor Diana Vreeland and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Lane was born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. He went on to study at the University of Michigan and the Rhode Island School of Design.
After a stint in Vogue’s art department, Lane worked for shoe designers Delman and Roger Vivier at Christian Dior.
In 1961, he founded his eponymous costume jewelry collection, which revolutionized the world of fashion jewelry.
“Before I came along, costume jewelry was never designed to be stylish,” Lane told the Palm Beach Daily News, at the opening of retrospective exhibition “Fabulous Fakes: Jewelry by Kenneth Jay Lane” at the Norton Museum of Art in 2011.
“It was the sort of thing made for women to wear to church--basic and kind of boring.”
Lane wrote a memoir in 2006, titled “Kenneth Jay Lane: Faking It.”
Meanwhile a documentary on the designer’s life, “Fabulously Fake: The Real Life of Kenneth Jay Lane,” by British filmmaker Gisele Roman, is set to appear at film festivals this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and will likely be available for wider viewing in 2018.
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