David Webb Bracelets*Shoelace Cuff, White Enamel

Brilliant-cut diamond and platinum laces, white enamel, 18K gold, and platinum

Also available with polished 18K gold laces, in ebony and bloodwood.

THE SHOELACE

Today’s élégante wants her fashion to say something. –David Webb

A garment with a centuries-long history of being restrictive, painful, and a bane for women may sound like surprising inspiration for jewelry, but has been a part of jewelry history at least since the Edwardians created diamond corsets as dog collar necklaces. David Webb took this as all the more reason to rethink the corset. So, in the late 1970s, the Shoelace Cuff was born.

Savage, but with style, the way women want to look these days. –David Webb, referencing his black enamel in 1971

The laces and stays that were so restrictive that they necessitated the invention of fainting couches have been reimagined into jewelry that’s more decorative than functional. David Webb consistently played with and responded to fashion moments and trends — it was a conversation for him, one that always considered women’s desires.

It’s only the suggestion of a corset that remains, with brilliant-cut diamond and platinum laces, black enamel, 18K gold, and platinum making a modern, elegant, and powerful statement that many people today might reference for shoelaces and the strong current of athletic shoe high fashion, a different sort of feminist statement.

Today, David Webb creates variations of the Shoelace Cuff — with iterations in black and white enamel with pavé-set diamond laces or wood with gold laces, and even one adorned with gold curlicues — one appeared on the wrist of Miranda Kerr for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in 2015.