Keeping Up Appearances.(women's tight budgets in clothing, accesories, and jewelries )

Byline: Sameer Reddy

Costume is no longer fine jewelry's poor cousin, but still comes at a fraction of the cost.

On the cult-favorite prime-time American drama "Gossip Girl," Jenny Humphrey, a pretty blonde from the wrong side of the New York City tracks--otherwise known as Brooklyn--goes to great lengths to project a soignee appearance in order to court popularity at her exclusive Upper East Side prep school. She saves her allowance, frequents secondhand shops, stitches her own party dresses and does whatever else it takes to keep up with her better-off peers.

Frequently she's able to one-up them; in one episode she dons one of her dresses and crashes a society gala, ending up in the New York Post's Page Six gossip column.

As the global economy continues its free fall, social climbers around the world might take inspiration from Jenny's ability to put forth a prosperous image regardless of the balance in her bank account.

For those who don't feel fully dressed without a big, shiny bauble on their finger or a sparkling collar around their neck, a well-done costume piece should fit the bill nicely. Since 1890, houses like Gripoix have been turning out couture-quality creations that rival genuine jewels. Today the field's best-known champion is Kenneth Jay Lane, whose highly collectible designs have sold at auction--including the diamante orchid brooch that sold at Sotheby's for $500 last year--and graced grandes dames like Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor. He's still one of the best sellers at Bergdorf's, but for those who find his look too old-fashioned, there's a new generation of avant-garde costume jewelers to choose from. Tom Binns and Subversive by Justin Giunta both offer innovative collections that use such materials as crystal, metal, glass and plastic to create eye-catching fantasy pieces that cost much less than the tens of thousands of dollars real gems would fetch. They're chic enough that Michelle Obama has been spotted sporting a Binns necklace at a Vogue-sponsored fundraiser--proof that high-end facsimiles have become fashionable in their own right. Costume is no longer fine jewelry's embarrassing poor cousin--though, happily, it still comes at a fraction of the cost.

Technological advancement has introduced an esthetic anomaly that blurs the line between the authentic and the artificial: the "cultured" diamond. Grown under laboratory conditions, cultured diamonds have characteristics identical to naturally occurring ones in terms of carbon composition, hardness, brilliance and transparency, so there's no chance of being called out on a fashionable fake. In fact, cultured diamonds are so realistic that experienced jewelers using a loupe usually aren't able to distinguish them from natural ones, and they're enough of a threat to the industry that De Beers has sent jewelers special machines free of charge to help them determine the ...