tangled up in chains; A new band of jewelers makes a fine mess of luxury.

Byline: Irini Arakas

There is an accessory uprising among us, and Tom Binns is the one to thank. For the past five years, the prickly Northern Irish designer has created jewelry that flies in the face of conservative chic and overall good sense: First there was his loony mashing together of pearl and chain necklaces; more recently, his collection of admire-at-your-own-risk skull-and-crossbones danglers. And thank goodness for that. At a time when polished, pretty looks predominate, a girl needs a little something to refer to her punkier aspirations. This season, a new crew of jewelers has felt the pull of chains; their work is the thing to show that one is not a slave to ladylike fashion.

Witness the bohemian verve of Tom Meyers, a self-proclaimed "petty anarchist" from Boston, who crafts his necklaces and bracelets on his stove top with a handheld blowtorch ("I think chefs use this for creme brulee") and a pickling pot that is tucked between a tin of MarieBelle hot cocoa powder and a jar of Handy Flux. With only one FIT jewelry-making class under his belt ("It was me and twelve housewives; we started with a rivet and graduated to soldering"), the perpetually

denim-clad former stylist fixes found trinkets-boars' tusks, bleached peacock feathers, burnt ostrich plumes, and forties love tokens-onto heavy sterling-silver links. "The first piece I ever made was for my mother," says Meyers, whose small Greenwich Village apartment is overrun with sixties biker boots and Cindy Sherman photographs. "I went to Bergdorf Goodman to buy a birthday gift for her, found nothing, ...