Everyone here knows October is the month of opal (and tourmaline). We love to celebrate it because, with a gemstone so brilliantly epic, it just feels right to acknowledge its current birthstone status, even if it still gets attention all year round. It’s both necessary and appropriate.
Now you might know how hypocritical (is that even the right word?) I am when it comes to opal. I’d write songs about this gem had I the talent to do so, but I’ll never wear it (for more on that, read this post from last year). Still, I’m not immune to its intense magnetism, no stranger to jewelry designers’ penchant for working with it (and thank goodness they do).
What’s really got me enthusiastic about opal this year is thinking about how truly appropriate it is for Halloween. At a time when it’s fun to witness the slightly spooky, enchanting, and strange, I’m realizing that opal can, in fact, be all those things.
It’s a witches’ brew, a tiny galaxy, a twilight zone. It contains magic and mystery and all sorts of allure that you’d be powerless to resist should you lock eyes with it. If it were the star of a movie, it’d be one where its character does a lot of hypnotizing. Maybe as a glittering vampire or a seductive sorceress. It’d open doors to strange worlds that protagonists would spend the entire film trying to escape from (and, as in all good movies, they’d learn something about themselves in the process).
Even the superstition about opal (the one that I’m a sucker for subscribing to) reeks of Halloween. A cursed stone so dangerously delightful, you can’t help but wear it anyway, to hell with the consequences. Dun dun dunnnnn.
No bones about it, opal is a true delight—old wives’ tale and all. And what a sensationally spectacular stone to represent the month of October, itself a month filled with magic and mystery.
Top: Galaxy Orb earrings in 18k rose gold with opal, brown diamonds, blue sapphires, and green tsavorite, $18,387; Bibi van der Velden
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