A necklace two hundred years older than its name, and the ones currently keeping score in the Elyzian atelier.
The tennis necklace has been wearing an alias since the 1980s.
Before that it was a rivière, the French word for river, and for good reason. A single line of matched stones, each one set so close to the next that the eye reads them as water: continuous, moving, catching light from every direction at once. Georgian jewelers were making them in the 1700s for rooms lit by candles, where a necklace had to work in half-darkness or it did not work at all. They foiled the backs of the stones, closed the settings, and sent women out into the evening wearing a line of fire at the throat.
It was the first fine jewelry designed to be seen from across a room, and it has never once lost the habit.
Then, at the 1978 US Open, the first year the tournament was played at Flushing Meadows, Chris Evert stopped a match. The clasp on her diamond line bracelet had given way mid-rally and the bracelet was somewhere on the court. Play paused. The bracelet was found. Asked about it afterward, Evert called it her tennis bracelet, and by the mid-1980s the trade had quietly retired "line bracelet" and adopted her phrase.
The necklace came along for the ride. Two centuries of history, renamed by a champion on her hands and knees on a hard court.
We have always found that a little funny, and entirely appropriate. The rivière was built for candlelight and ballrooms. The tennis necklace is the same object with its sleeves rolled up. It goes to the black-tie table and the farmers market, to the school pickup line and the wedding, and it has stopped apologizing for either.
The Company You Keep
The most famous diamond necklace in history was never worn by the woman it ruined.
In 1785 a Paris swindler named Jeanne de la Motte convinced a cardinal that Marie Antoinette wanted a necklace of six hundred and forty-seven diamonds and could not be seen buying it herself. The cardinal bought it on her behalf. The necklace vanished to London, broken into pieces and sold off stone by stone. The queen had never asked for it, never touched it, never saw it. It did not matter. Paris decided she had, and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace became one of the stories that walked her to the scaffold four years later.
Zsa Zsa Gabor understood the gentler version. She wore diamonds at breakfast, married nine times, and treated fine jewelry the way other women treat a good coat: something you simply put on before leaving the house. There is a black and white diamond tennis necklace in our case that carries her name, and it is the one Elizabeth reaches for most mornings.
And Chris Evert, whose only crime was a clasp, gave the form its second life. She had been wearing the bracelet to play because she liked it and saw no reason to take it off. That, more than any broadcast, is the reason the name stuck. Diamonds had been proposed for evening. She wore them to work.
One Row, Uninterrupted
A tennis necklace is a simple idea executed under difficult conditions.
Every stone must sit at exactly the same height, or the line breaks and the light breaks with it. Every link must articulate, so the necklace pours over the collarbone instead of standing away from it. A necklace that kinks has been built with links too stiff or stones set too high. A necklace that lies flat and moves like water has been built by someone who cared about a hinge nobody will ever see.
Then there is the matching.
Diamonds are graded on a scale that the whole trade agrees on, which makes a diamond line comparatively easy to assemble. Colored stones are not. Sapphires from the same parcel will arrive in a dozen shades of blue. Tsavorites vary from grass to bottle green. Pink sapphire runs from rose to fuchsia to a bubblegum that has no business being in a mineral. To build one uninterrupted row in one color, the atelier sorts by hue, tone, and saturation, stone by stone, under the same light, and sends back everything that argues.
The Pear-Shaped Emerald and Diamond Tennis Necklace took months. Nine and a half carats of pear-shaped Zambian emeralds had to agree on a single green, the cool, slightly blue green that Zambia produces and Colombia does not, saturated without going dark, clean without going pale. Emerald is the least cooperative stone on the sorting table. Every pear was cut from a different crystal with its own garden of inclusions, and each one had to earn its place beside a round diamond and a polished gold bead before the row was allowed to close.
The Bezel Set Tsavorite Tennis Necklace is the other kind of achievement: 23.59 carats of emerald-cut garnet, every stone matched, made once. There will not be a second.
Three Ways In
The Line
The classic. One stone, one row, one color.
The Blue Sapphire Tennis Necklace carries 37.88 carats in 14K yellow gold, adjustable, and it is the piece most likely to be worn every day of the week by the woman who buys it. The Adjustable Emerald Tennis Necklace holds 7.04 carats of green and sits from fifteen to eighteen inches, which means it works with a crewneck on Tuesday and a neckline on Saturday without a second thought. The Round Cut Bezel Set Pink Sapphire, at $18,100, is the same idea in a color that reads as a mood.
The line is the form at its most honest. Nothing to hide behind. The stones either match or they do not.
The Graduated and the Dual
The rivière was often graduated, larger stones at the center and smaller toward the clasp, and the effect is a crescendo: the necklace grows as it approaches the throat. The pear-shaped emeralds do a version of this without changing size at all. The point of each pear turns toward the clasp, so the whole row reads as movement, and the shape follows the curve of the collarbone rather than fighting it. There are two of them in the case: the ready-to-ship necklace with gold beads between the stones, and a made-to-order sibling that trades some of the emerald weight for more diamond.
The dual tennis necklace takes a different route to the same drama. Two rows, one of gemstones, one of diamonds, set side by side so each makes the other look better. The Emerald and Diamond Accented Dual is the most serious necklace in this collection. The Blue Sapphire and Diamond Accented Dual is its cooler sister. Both were made for evenings that matter.
The Color Study
This is where the atelier misbehaves.
The Ombre Tsavorite Garnet Tennis Necklace runs from pale mint to deep forest along a single row, with marquise diamond dangles hanging below like rain. The Orange Sapphire, in round bezels or trillion cuts, is the color of an apricot held up to the last of the light. The Pink Tourmaline with marquise dangles is a garden in June. The Brown Zircon in rose gold is cognac in a low-lit room, and it is the necklace that opens our fall color story this year.
These are tennis necklaces for people who already own a diamond one, or who decided long ago that they would rather have the color.
How to Wear a Tennis Necklace
The tennis necklace is the rare fine-jewelry object that works with a T-shirt.
Sixteen inches sits at the base of the throat and is the length that makes a collarbone look like a decision. Fifteen is a choker and wants a bare neck or a very good turtleneck. Seventeen and eighteen drop into the neckline and layer well with a pendant hung an inch or two below, which is where the Poisson Pendant has been known to wander.
A single row can run alone with nothing else at all. It can also stack: a diamond line above, a sapphire line below, a pink sapphire beside an orange one for the person who has stopped asking permission. Elizabeth wears one nearly every day and often three. Valaree saves hers for the evenings that call for black tie, which is the other correct answer. Most of the collection page photography is Elizabeth's neck.
With a white shirt, wear it outside the collar. With a slip dress, let it have the whole neckline. With a swimsuit, on a boat, in August: yes, and take it off before you swim.
Housekeeping, Briefly
The clasp is the entire necklace.
A full-length tennis necklace in the atelier closes with a box clasp and a safety catch. An adjustable one closes with a lobster clasp on a chain, which is secure by design but has no safety, so give it a tug before an evening out and check that the jump ring is closed. The Evert lesson is a good one: the stones will last for centuries, the clasp is a moving part, and moving parts want attention.
Sapphire, at 9 on the Mohs scale, will outlive everyone reading this. Tsavorite and tourmaline, at 7 to 7.5, are strong enough for daily wear and should come off before the gym. Emerald is hard but not tough, which is the trade's way of saying it scratches slowly and chips suddenly; wear it to dinner, not to move furniture. Zircon, at 6.5 to 7.5, wants the same courtesy. Onyx is softer still and should be stored apart from anything harder.
Clean with mild soap, lukewarm water, and a soft brush. Lay the necklace flat to dry. Store it flat or hanging, never coiled, or the links will remember the shape and hold it against you.
Skip the ultrasonic unless a jeweler has cleared the stone. Skip the jacuzzi entirely.
The Point of the Thing
A tennis necklace is a line drawn in one color across the one part of the body that is always visible.
It does not require a ring size, an ear preference, or a wrist measurement. It requires only knowing what someone loves to look at. Blue, for the one who never wears anything else. Green, for the one who does. Pink, for the one who has always suspected she was the fun one. Brown zircon, for the one who is.
It is the first thing on in the morning and the last thing off at night, and on the best days it never comes off at all.
The rivière was named for a river. Two hundred years later we still cannot think of a better word for it.
The Edit
Nine tennis necklaces currently in the Elyzian atelier, from the everyday line to the once-only.
Blue Sapphire Tennis Necklace in 14K Yellow Gold, $7,850
37.88 carats, adjustable. The one for every day of the week.
Adjustable Emerald Tennis Necklace in 14K Yellow Gold, $8,700
7.04 carats of green, fifteen to eighteen inches. Tuesday and Saturday, both.
Pink Sapphire and Diamond Tennis Necklace in 14K Yellow Gold, $8,928
Pink beside white. The layering piece.
Ombre Tsavorite Garnet Tennis Necklace with Lab-Grown Marquise Diamond Dangles, $11,900
Mint to forest along a single row, with rain underneath.
Bezel Set Tsavorite Tennis Necklace in 14K Yellow Gold, $14,973
23.59 carats of emerald-cut garnet. One of a kind.
Pear-Shaped Emerald and Diamond Tennis Necklace in 14K Gold, $18,800
9.50 carats of Zambian pears, round diamonds, gold beads. Months in the sorting.
The Zsa Zsa Black and White Diamond Tennis Necklace in 14K Gold, $18,848
Diamonds at breakfast. Elizabeth's pick.
Brown Zircon Tennis Necklace in 14K Rose Gold, $24,750
Cognac in a low-lit room. Opens our fall color story.
Emerald and Diamond Accented Dual Tennis Necklace in 14K Gold, $39,624
Two rows, one evening that matters.
— Elyzian