Beads as an ancestral fashion accessory
By: Chidinma Promise
Hello Fashionable, in this week’s article, we’ll be looking into beads. Beads hold ancient roots, and their cultural significance can be traced to their early use in bartering. Beads served as a primitive currency, and they still retain their value today.
Beads originally were used as/for all sorts of things including money/monetary exchange, performing marital traditional rites, ancestral prayers, to identify or differentiate royalty from a commoner and so on. Beads in the course of civilization have evolved into a regular fashion statement. They can be used for hair beautification, wrist beautification, made into neck pieces, bags, home décor and so on.
There are popular beads in recent times and some of them include Shamballa/karma bracelets (some people believe that the recently accustomed wrist wear/bracelets, popularly made in black or dark colored beads, hold universal significance) While many youths have adapted the habit of owning and wearing more than one of these beads on their wrist as a fashion statement accessory. Some fashion designers have gone as far as creating amazing dress collections and embroidering wedding dresses to give it a more sophisticating, rich and classy appeal. Beads in recent times have evolved from strictly thread or line insert form to clip-ons. Beads can range from heavy large beads to flexible single beads. Beaded neck pieces were popularly known and restricted to royals but now everyone can and is a part of the trend. This though does not reduce the royal sensation of beads when you wear it as an accessory for a beautiful evening dress or traditional attire.
Beaded embroidery on the hand is a different ball game entirely as people who wear such are either heavily loaded or have designers as family members. Beading an attire makes it more expensive as the beads for attire embroidery on its own costs quite a sum and the time invested in transforming an attire with beads is intense but the result, solely worth it.
Beads are made of and from different materials ranging from fish teeth (from the early days) to red like stones; Jasper, Carnelian, crystal, quartz and steatite; to precious jewels like Pearl, Diamond, Silver, Gold, Ivory, Glass; to other resources like wire/French wire, soapstone, resin, vitreous enamel, wood, plastic and so on:The more precious the make-up material, the more expensive the bead. This just means that if you’re thinking of having your attire embroidered with beads and you’re not from old money, start saving up now or stay off it because with beads, you’re either going all out or not. Beads have been here since before fashion modern days and if one thing is sure, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon as it continues to evolve with life in all its spheres.
