Fashion Jewelry Brooches

Antique and vintage costume and fashion pins and brooches are decorative jewels traditionally pinned to garments and used to fasten pieces of clothing together where needed. In recent years, these accessories have seen increasing popularity.

Costume jewelry is made of inexpensive materials and is typically designed to accessorize with current fashions. There has been no shortage of unique fashion brooches created over the years by jewelers and jewelry houses such as Trifari, Kenneth Jay Lane and others. Enthusiasts of Chanel — the founder of which loved costume jewelry but couldn’t resist designing jewelry with diamonds — are also going to find that the range of fashion jewelry that has been created at the company includes sophisticated Chanel brooches embellished with pearls and glass jewels. 

Given their long history, brooches have expectedly taken on a variety of different shapes and forms over time, with jewelers turning to assorted methods of ornamentation for these accessories, including enameling and the integration of pearls and gemstones.

Cameo brooches that originated during the Victorian age are characterized by a shell carved in raised relief that feature portraits of a woman’s profile, while 19th-century micromosaic brooches, comprising innumerable individually placed glass fragments, sometimes feature miniature depictions of a pastoral scene in daily Roman life.

Brooches are versatile and adaptable. These decorative accessories can be worn in your hair, on hats, scarves and on the lower point of V-neck clothing. Pin a dazzling brooch to the lapel of your blazer-and-tee combo or add a cluster of smaller pins to your overcoat. And while brooches have their place in “mourning jewelry,” in that a mourning brooch is representative of your connection to a lost loved one, they’re widely seen as romantic and symbolic of love, so much so that a hardcore brooch enthusiast might advocate for brooches to be worn over the heart.

Today, find a wide variety of antique and vintage brooches in the collection of costume and fashion jewelry on 1stDibs.