Just in time for some last-minute Mother’s Day shopping, Hermès has unveiled a sleek new 2,100 square-foot floor at its 691 Madison Avenue location. The muted, sleek, glass and wood room designed by Parisian architectural firm RDAI gives the colorful carrés and classic accessories plenty of room to stand out—making it harder to choose just one from the new palette of spring colors: lavender, blush, rose, sanguine, Mykonos, saffron, and paprika.

The new space

But possibly even more exciting is the introduction of the Custom Silk Corner, a premiere service where the iconic scarves can be embroidered with initials, date, place, event or a special message.

Hermès, 691 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. 212.751.3181

Consider a line by the late Gregory Peck in his role as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” In a tribute to 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s classic novel, Oliver Peoples had a bit of fun with this statement. The longtime purveyor of classic Hollywood eyewear used the original tortoiseshell spectacles Peck wore throughout the film (his son, Tony Peck, had kept them in safekeeping all these years) to recreate the iconic frames. “When I was 18 and starting to wear glasses, my father gave me the originals. I loved the glasses intrinsically; I loved where they came from,” says Tony Peck. Just one caveat—donning these handsomely crafted frames might not offer some supernatural insight into the celebrity, but they will inch you a little closer to his wholly inquisitive, intellectual affectation. Imitation is the purest form of flattery, indeed.

oliverpeoples.com; $285

In light of Peck’s love for the literary, all proceeds from the frames will be donated to the Los Angeles Public Library.

Over the years Swiss luxury brand DeWitt, known for its innovative men’s watches, has made a few limited-edition pieces for such women as Queen Elizabeth II and founder Jérôme de Witt’s daughter. Now less connected ladies can indulge in the company’s timepieces too: Its first women’s line, called Golden Afternoon, debuts this spring.

Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites, the collection comprises four ultrafeminine styles with details like mother-of-pearl faces, sky and floral motifs, diamond-covered bezels, and hands meant to evoke angel wings (at Neiman Marcus, Newport Beach, California; $30,000 to $90,000).

Photo courtesy of Dewitt

To mark its fifth anniversary, jewelry house Leviev has created five lavish pieces, each channeling a city in which the company has a boutique: London, New York, Moscow, Singapore, and Dubai—the latter represented by a desert sky–inspired necklace of rare diamonds (shown) and hundreds of sapphires. The collection will travel to each store, starting this month in New York (leviev.com; prices upon request).

Photo courtesy Leviev

Spring eyewear plays hide and seek with crystalline frames and mirrored accents.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race’s acetate square-frame sunglasses, $100, slowandsteadywinstherace.com.

Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquière’s acetate sunglasses, $325, at Bergdorf Goodman, New York, 212.872.2526.

Jil Sander’s metal sunglasses, $585, at Jil Sander, New York, 212.838.6100.

Photographs by Arno Frugier

Like just about everyone I know, I’m a bit of a caffeine addict—I am barely human without my daily dose of concentrated green tea, particularly after a night out.

Wednesday morning, however, I discovered an even better pick-me-up than legal stimulants: jewelry.

Less than twelve hours after leaving the annual spring New Yorkers for Children gala, I paid a visit to the Munnu studio on the Upper East Side where Siddharth Kasliwal, the son of the famed Gem Palace jewelry designer Munnu Kasliwal, gave me a private viewing of the Jaipur-based company’s Indo-Russian collection, recently the subject of a Kennedy Center exhibition in Washington D.C. Despite their museum-worthy workmanship, the pieces were all produced in the last five to ten years and were being shown in the United States for the first time.

Now, attending New York society events on a regular basis, I’ve seen my fair share of jewelry—just the night before I had admired a Fred Leighton cuff and earrings worn by the model Crystal Renn. But these Gem Palace stunners defied all my expectations of what constitutes fine jewelry.

The ruby cuff.

Take a ruby cuff, for starters: the 95 carats of rubies (sourced from an African mine for their color) had been inlaid into the cuff with diamonds in such a seamless manner as to give the impression of enamel. On the cuff’s underside? Actual Jaipur enamel in a similar pattern.

A portrait of Mumtaz Mahal.

Or a necklace comprised of 108 carats of flawless diamonds and 850 carats of Basra pearls, with a central pendant that features a 16.33 carat diamond and whose back is covered with a delicate image of the Taj Mahal rendered in diamonds. Flip this open and you see a portrait of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, in whose memory the building was erected.

“This is for the body and soul,” explained the younger Kasliwal of the equally stunning backs to all of the pieces. “A client once asked my father, ‘Why should I pay for this?’ and he replied, ‘Why do you buy expensive underwear?’”

La Perla no longer seemed to hold much luster.

“We come and go, jewelry remains forever, so it needs to be perfect from all angles,” continued Kasliwal, who is the eighth generation in his family to help run Gem Palace.

From top: the front and back of the sarpesh.

“Oh this is my favorite piece, it’s the only piece a man can wear,” he said as he pulled out a sarpesh, a decorative turban attachment worn by men on their wedding day (think a tiara for dudes). This particular one was 22.5K gold (as all the Gem Palace creations are, excepting the silver-gold alloy used for lacework) sporting South Sea Pearls, 72 carats of emeralds and 110 carats of diamonds.

“I found this, now I just have to find the bride,” he joked.

And the checkered green enameled and ruby and diamond-encrusted bird shaped chuski, an object traditionally used for drinking opium water (“we tested it with wine”)?

The chuski.

“That’s for the bachelor party,” grinned Kasliwal.

I should mention at this point, that I was having a party of my own, because by now Kasliwal had draped two necklaces around my neck, one a beautiful rose-cut diamond choker, the other, what his father calls a “T-shirt necklace.” Translation? 780 carats of emeralds and 288 carats of flawless diamonds that look so insanely decadent, that most people would assume your piece was a fake.

The writer blinged out.

“You can walk on the subway and they think you’re some crazy lady wearing all your bling, bling.”

Would he have thought me crazy if I’d made a run for it at that point?

Perhaps the most blinding piece de resistance was a wedding suite owned by the royal family and on loan for the exhibit (all of the other pieces are, technically, for sale). Comprised of a necklace and extraordinary headpiece, it took the 75 Gem Palace workers three and a half years to produce, using over 880 carats of diamonds and 5,500 carats of pearls. Oh, and the whole thing weighs about twelve pounds, and the bride wore it for seven hours.

There are more effective ways to lose weight and build muscle mass, but really could there be more a decadent one?

Wilfredo Rosado creates the kind of pieces you'd expect from a man who used to shop for diamonds on 47th street with Andy Warhol: playful, decadent, with nods to "street culture," as the designer puts it. "The art world, the fashion world, high-society in New York, [Andy] was able to bring all of those worlds together on his own terms and make it cool," says Rosado, the man behind the two-months-old eponymous collection, "That's kind of how I approach my work now."

And it's working. Fresh from the February launch, his shocking pink feather earrings graced Gwyneth Paltrow's lobes during her Grammy performance with Cee Lo Green (Rosado already has upwards of 30 requests from private clients) and Rihanna sported one of his cheeky cameo rings at the awards. It was a fitting debut for the collection: they're cool enough to make a splash at the Grammy's and exquisite enough to be worthy of the red carpet.

Wilfredo's Pink Plume Earrings: 18k white gold feather with diamonds and tourmalines.

"I treat diamonds in a way that's not so precious," he says about his unconventional designs. Though that is a bit misleading: Wilfredo's pieces may have an offhand style, but the pieces are unquestionably precious (as in, exquisitely crafted with price tags averaging around $75,000 to match). And their provenance is nothing to scoff at. Wilfredo turned to a legendary Place Vendôme haute joaillerie atelier to produce his couture pieces and all other pieces are handmade in small studios in Italy.

Even the feathers in his collection got the couture treatment, literally. During an initial meeting with Maison Lemarié (master feather workers for Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga and others) Wilfredo was worried that they might not be willing to accept him as a new client, until he spied Stefano Pilatti (whom Wilfredo used to share an office with during his 23 years at Armani) in the next room. "I thought, 'This is it! This is going to legitimize me!' So I ran across the room and gave him a big hug and thought, 'I'm in.' It was like all of the stars we aligned."

The result is a series of exuberant plumes that are amazingly customizable: the feathers on the "Gwyneth" earrings are attached by magnets and can easily be unclipped to be worn without or switched for a different color, and the feathers on the large cuff can be unscrewed or swapped for pavé diamonds (the cuff will also come standard with white, black, and pale pink feathers, though Maison Lemarié can custom dye any hue).

Possibly the most exciting piece to come from his first collection is the Urban Ring, debuting in late May. It looks like a dome festooned with four teardrop emeralds and a micro pavé pattern, but when you flip the dome over 180 degrees, a six-carat diamond is revealed. "This is where the street culture comes in," Wilfredo says, explaining that he sees it for cities like New York or Johannesburg where the wearer might not want to have a large diamond visible at all times. "You get to your event, flip the cover back and, pow!"

The full line is an impressive 45 pieces in seven different collections--quite a testament to his breadth as a designer.

Factory "transforms cogs into sheets of industrial lace."

Cage is delicately architectural with diamonds set in intricate interlocking scaffoldings.

Fringe--a collection befitting of Tina Turner's dance moves--is made of a series of thin gold chains capped off by diamonds.

Branches takes a stylized view of a natural world "fruited" in diamonds.

Hand-carved in a legacy cameo workshop in Torre del Greco, Italy, the Cameo collection gives the old standard a saucy update. "With everything I do, I wanted there to be some sexual tension," he says.

In another twist on tradition, the Venetian Blackamoor style is "playfully reinterpreted to pay homage to the African princes of today."

The Feather collection takes its inspiration from an unlikely source: roach clips. "In the late 70's and 80's, girls would smoke weed with them and then clip the feathered clips to the back of their Lee jeans," he says. "I thought it was so cool. I wanted to make that more glamorous."

Of course, a Wilfredo screwdriver is no average screwdriver: the "Jewel Tool," which is included with each piece in the collection, is elegantly engraved with a feather and is a gem in and of itself.

Wilfredo's collection is available online and will be sold at Bergdorf Goodman starting in May.

A wedge sandal is a seasonal must have, and this year designers were all about the espadrille, working the summer classic into brave new heights. Below some of my favorites of the season—from neutrals and whites (Tory Burch, Edmundo Castillo and Christian Louboutin) to a bright poppy pink from Nine West.

Top: Tory Burch, $165, toryburch.com. Middle Row from left to right: Edmundo Castillo, $495, at Saks Fifth Avenue, saks.com; Nine West, $99, ninewest.com. Bottom: Christian Louboutin, $545, at Saks Fifth Avenue, 877.551.SAKS.

Photo: Hannah Whitaker

They're not quite as good as the real things, but man, are they cute. Elizabeth Spiridakis, writer, blogger and (evidently) crafter extraordinaire makes a hobby out of remaking iconic designer bags in construction paper. "I have two self-imposed rules," she says. "One: they are only made out of things I can get at the drugstore: construction paper, glue stick and tape. And two, I like them to be 'functional.' I mean, they are paper and you can't actually use them but I want the closures to be real and usable, and they should look good from any angle." So good, in fact, that we're finding it hard to resist slinging them over our shoulders.

The bags, from top to bottom: Tods, Bally, Celine, and Michael Kors.

To achieve the punk princess look, you need lots of eyeliner, bottles of colored hair powder, and boxes upon boxes of safety pins.

The night before the “Poor Little Punk Girl” shoot, makeup artist Peter Philips received a rather odd request from the photographer: “Inez [van Lamsweerde] called me up and said, ‘Bring lots of safety pins tomorrow,’” he recalls. “I thought, Isn’t that something the stylist should do?” As it turned out, the pins became a major element in the punking up of sweet actress Mia Wasikowska, with rows of them delicately affixed to her face, neck, and chest using makeup glue. “It took a long time,” says Philips, laughing. “I was totally zoned in, applying them one by one. But Mia was really into it, so that helped.” To complete the look, hairstylist Christiaan, known for his avant-garde ’dos, employed copious amounts of Bumble and bumble Hair Powder to create Wasikowska’s modified mohawk. “The more powder you spray on, the harder and stiffer the hair gets,” he says. Christiaan, who topped things off by adding a few brightly colored hair extensions, was grateful that Wasikowska’s long locks had been shorn into a shag. “When you have that kind of haircut, you can get there easily,” he explains. “If you have Snooki hair, not so easy.”