It strikes with no warning. Every so often, I wake up with the jingle for the 1970s Tiffany Taylor doll stuck in my head. Tiffany’s gimmick was a rotating scalp with dual hair colors. White Tiffany could be changed from blonde to brunette; African-American Tiffany switched between auburn and black. These dolls were produced by…
In the News
Win a Wendy Brandes Necklace From Lucky Today
Today is the day! You only have 24 hours to enter Lucky Magazine’s Lucky Breaks Giveaway to win a diamond necklace from my collection.
What Wendy Wore: Columbia Spectator Annual Awards Dinner
I’ve mentioned before on the blog that I’m the chairman of the board of alumni trustees of the Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia University’s student newspaper. I was the arts and entertainment editor at Spectator in 1988. As one of the trustees, I now advise the students on a variety of issues and promote the newspaper’s…
Wimmin-Haters and the Grammy Dress Code
I spent some time poking around teh Internets yesterday, looking for someone to confirm the authenticity of a wimmin-hating dress-code email sent out by CBS’s official prudes ahead of Sunday’s Grammy telecast. Did you see this? It was first reported by Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood on Wednesday. A source leaked the memo to her,…
Post-Super-Bowl Post: Jewelry for Beyonce, a Bet on Eminem
Like more than 108 million other people, I was glued to the television on Sunday, watching the Beyonce concert. You know, the big performance that was preceded by football, and followed by quiet naptime and then more football. I agree with Beyonce that the show was “Gone With the Wind fabulous!” I was thrilled by…
Get Lucky, Get Wendy Brandes Jewelry
As some of you have already noticed, I’m taking part in Lucky magazine’s Lucky Breaks Giveaway. The magazine is giving away a prize a day from February 4 through March 15. On February 13, the prize is a white-gold necklace with 40 points of diamonds (there are 100 points in a carat) from yours truly….
The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.
A lot of my jewelry is inspired by royalty, but I focus on females: queens, empresses, queen consorts, princesses. I figure history as it is taught in elementary and high school is basically about men, so I prefer to concentrate on herstory. However, I have a soft spot for one dude: England’s 15th-century Richard III….
A Farewell to Ed Koch, Plus the Week in Review
I felt like an era ended when former New York City mayor Ed Koch died at 88 on Friday. When Koch became New York City’s mayor in 1978, I had just turned 10; his third and final term ended on Dec. 31, 1989, eight days after I turned 22. He was the mayor of my…
Too Mainstream? Get the Fuck Out of Here.
The reaction to my “romantic, gothic, alien” jewelry that I hear (and enjoy) the most is, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” Other jewelers gasp when they see that my golden egg locket opens to reveal a tiny, diamond-eyed silver chicken … which, in turn, opens to reveal three gold eggs. I…
What Wendy Wore: Inauguration Day 2013
MrB and I went to Washington yesterday for an inauguration dinner. We didn’t see the First Couple — Beyonce and Jay-Z — in person, nor did we see Barack and Michelle Obama, but we still had a good time. I wore an emerald-green Zang Toi gown for the last inauguration. According to Pantone, emerald is…