Gilded Age Fashion & Jewelry

Elizabeth L. Block PhD is an art and culture historian, international speaker, and award-winning author of Gilded Age Fashion, Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing, and Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion.

Marion Fasel is a jewelry historian, an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventurine newsletter on Substack. Throughout her career, she has written 11 books about fine jewelry. The Wall Street Journal called her most recent publication, The History of Diamond Engagement Rings: A True Romance, “one of the best coffee table books for 2026.” In 2021, Marion acted as guest curator of the exhibition, Beautiful Creatures: Jewelry Inspired by the Animal Kingdom at the American Museum of Natural History.

Kasia Walicka Maimone is a costume designer whose work spans theater, film, and television. Kasia’s recent credit include 4 seasons of The Gilded Age, The Whisper Man directed by James Ashcroft with Robert DeNiro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan, Netflix’s Zero Day with Robert DeNiro, Angela Bassett, Jessie Plemmons, Bruce Springsteen story — Deliver Me From Nowhere with Jeremy Allen White directed by Scott Cooper. Kasia worked with Scott on Pale Blue Eye and Black Mass. Her credits include The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson. Capote, Foxcatcher, Moneyball by Bennett Miller. Ready Player One, Bridge of Spies by Steven Spielberg, A Quiet Place Part 1 & 2 by John Krasinski and the Phillip Glass operas Les Enfants Terribles and The Sound of a Voice.

Jonathan Wahl recently transitioned to Director Emeritus of the Jewelry Center at 92NY after 28 years as the program’s director. He is also an artist whose work ranges from drawing and sculpture to decorative art. It is often conceptually linked to historical movements and political commentary. Wahl’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston, the Houston Museum of Fine art, The New York Historical Society and the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. It has been featured or reviewed in publications as diverse as The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Metalsmith Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the Aventurine, and The Magazine Antiques, among others.