I have a confession to make. I have a penchant for really big diamond jewellery. Large, shiny, sparkly, glittery stones – Dame Elizabeth Taylor style – and the showier, the better. I’m not sure where I got this proclivity from… perhaps it’s from watching too much The Bold and the Beautiful when I was younger. (Damn you Taylor Hamilton Hayes Forrester-Forrester and your big, twinkly engagement rings!) Or perhaps it’s my current partiality to Dynasty. I just love sparkly jewellery so much, so I’ve decided my life needs more of it. There’s just one eensy little problem. I’m a man.
Now, I know you’re all picturing some Liberace/Elton morph after reading that but I’m actually not that glittery – or flamboyant (I hope). I try to control my jazz hands and I haven’t been to a gay bar since my boss dragged me to Fire in Vauxhall (Google it) two years ago only to see me escape at the sight of five hundred shirtless, oiled-up men dancing around to Dannii Minogue. Yet, when one of my favourite PRs, Miho Kushibe at A.I., showed me the work of Disaya Sorakraikitikul last week, my magpie eyes (read: fagpie eyes) lit up like a little gay at Christmas.
I just want all of it. Especially that big Count Dracula ring with the black stone and all the silver. Perhaps my fondness for jewellery isn’t actually caused by my desire to be Alexis Carrington Colby as much as it’s a result of too much vampire worship, and too many hours on the Internet trying to justify to myself purchasing clothes and accessories from cheap online shops with questionable names such as ‘MoonMaiden’ and ‘Nemesis Now’. Disaya Sorakraikitikul, however, is anything but cheap – and it certainly caters to one’s inner luxury goth.
I’m not going to go into a whole the-collection-is-made-up-of-X-amount-of-pieces spiel, because frankly that sort of blogging is boring (plus there are pictures above and I presume you’ve all got eyes), but instead revisit my point of departure, which was, I believe, the predicament of being a gentleman who likes a big sparkly ring: for regardless of one’s style motives – whether you approach diamonds from a faggy perspective or a dirty goth perspective – big diamonds on a man are sort of frowned upon by mainstream society.
I’d love to wear my big Disaya Sorakraikitikul rock thinking I just look like a heavily accessorised Louis Simonon ‘rock star chic’ type of straight-seeming boy, but the matter of fact is that I won’t. I’ll look like a fairy goth – or alternatively touch down somewhere between Italian Mafioso stroking a white Siamese whilst ordering a ‘whacking’, or a young Karl Lagerfeld. But actually, come to think of it, all of the above are fine by me. As long as I get my diamonds.