Should you be carrying crystals with you?
The fashion world has always been one for a fanciful dalliance, so it comes with little surprise to discover that crystals are now as prevalent as coconut water backstage at the shows. Long-time crystal lover Victoria Beckham recently told an audience of students at La Salle College in Singapore, ‘if I told you my backstage rituals, and was honest, you would think I was a little weird’, and professes to keep crystals about her person, and placed around her studio at all times. ‘I carry my crystals with me which some people might think is odd, but it works for us’.
Katy Perry too shared her love for mystical stones with Cosmopolitan, claiming that her constantly coupled relationship status is down to the fact that ‘I carry a lot of rose quartz, which attracts the male. Maybe I need to calm it down with the amethyst’.
But like Kabbala bands and novelty veganism, are crystals the reserve of celebrity spiritual tourism (let’s not even bring stone-fiddlers Spencer Pratt and Robin Thicke into this), or are they something we should all be embracing? The glimmer of quartz on the odd desk around the NEVER UNDERDRESSED office suggests the latter. Beauty writer Viola Levy, whose computer is flanked by chunks of negative energy-deflecting black tourmaline, stress-reducing amonozite and energising Iron Pyrite, says, ‘I definitely feel calmer having crystals by my desk and by my bed at home’. Personally, I’m with her. The piece of amethyst quartz by my own keyboard, known for its calming properties has zenned me through many-a stressful gif search. ‘It may just be a placebo effect’, Viola admits, ‘but if it works, it works’.
Over at British fashion powerhouse Marks and Spencer, a little bit of crystal magic is also at work. Menswear editor William Oliver told us, ‘I find the age and the mechanics of the creation of crystals really amazing, anything that is that old and naturally beautiful makes me think there has to be attached spiritual properties’. He continues, ‘just having them around makes me feel better, something calm in the middle of quite a hectic city lifestyle. They're quite a beautiful object, and being around beautiful things - art, clothes, people or crystals - definitely does you some good’.
Beauty is guaranteed to catch the magpie eye of us fashion types, such is the nature of the profession. But why are crystals unique in their allure, and can sceptics be persuaded to do anything other than scoff at them? According to Sheila Young, crystal expert and reader at Psychic Sisters in Selfridges, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in their powerful properties or not.
‘All crystals have energy forces,’ she says ‘so whether you see them as a placebo or something that genuinely works, they will do their thing anyway’.
She verifies this theory with an account of a stroppy teenager, who she saw tamed when asked to sort stones as her mother shopped at Psychic Sisters. ‘Unwittingly her energy was mixed up with that of the crystals and she was calmed down’, Sheila says. ‘It’s the same as when Negative Nora stomps into the office and offloads her negativity onto you; You feel awful and she feels great again because basically, she’s put all her shit in your energy field’. Believer or otherwise, we can all no doubt identify with that.
"All crystals have energy forces, so whether you see them as a placebo or something that genuinely works, they will do their thing anyway." - Sheila Young, Psychic Sisters
According to experts, the power of crystals, as opposed to a favourite postcard or sentimental talisman, for keeping your desk free of everyday beef, is their crystalline structure’s ability to absorb and amplify energy. ‘They’re kind of like transmitters’, explains esteemed astrologer and New Age thinker, Shelley Von Strunckel, who since retiring as a fashion stylist and buyer many years ago, has been writing on mystical matters for publications including Vogue and The Sunday Times, providing a voice for these often misunderstood topics.
She’s careful to point out though, that feeling the benefits of crystals is not as simple as ordering some quartz and hoping for the best. Without being correctly energised, ‘crystals are passive, so on their own, they’re just a bunch of rocks’. According to Von Strunckel, the best way to understand a crystal’s energy is to think of it like a computer chip. ‘Computer memory is made of silicon chips, which is a variety of crystal, and when you apply energy to it, in this case electricity, it remembers something’.
‘Like a computer, whatever you programme you put into it is what you’re going to get back from it,’ she continues, ‘whatever you put into a crystal will be mirrored back’.
Simply acquiring a crystal is not enough then. ‘That’s like buying a diet book and then eating whatever the hell you want, you have to make it good for you’, she laughs. But how does one fill a crystal with the power to quell your rage when someone steps on your foot in a tube carriage or you discover your local coffee place is still not doing almond milk? ‘People always ask me who can energise their crystals’ Von Strunckel tells us, ‘and I say, “you can baby, you’ve got the power!”’.
She explains that if you’re given a crystal ‘you don’t know where that crystal’s been hanging out’, so it’s important to cleanse it by placing it in sunlight or running water, ideally, she suggests, ‘a running stream if you’re near one’. Then, she says, it’s as simple as ‘holding it to your heart and focussing your positive thoughts’. An increased understanding of mindfulness and the act of ordering one’s thoughts would indicate that this meditative process is beneficial whether you believe the crystal absorbs your energy or not - the focus will no doubt prove calming regardless. ‘Call it what you will – energy, vibes or whatever’, Sheila Young says. ‘people notice it, spiritual and ordinary people’.
"Crystals are passive, so on their own, they’re just a bunch of rocks." - Shelley Von Strunckel
Von Strunckel also agrees that a positively energised crystal is a wonderful gift for a friend, and was given many of hers by the late Kazuko Oshima, who she describes as ‘Miss Designer Crystal’. As well as being stocked in Collette in Paris, she had a case in Barney’s, and ‘every woman in New York knew her’, Von Strunckel proudly explains. ‘She was very generous with her designs and would go around all of the magazines at Conde Nast giving crystals to the editors’, she says. ‘She gave one to an editor who’s been trying to get pregnant, and three months later, she was’. She continues, ‘people tend to think of crystals as new age hippy stuff, but she was so fashion’.
For the more practically minded, or those who work in the conservative kind of office where crystals might not be a commonplace desk accoutrement, Aveda’s new Dual Exfoliation Facial offers the chance to dip a toe in the crystal waters, as it were. The treatment uses Tourmaline, which Aveda therapist Georgia explains is ‘exceptionally effective at healing and protecting the skin, since the absorption of nutrients into the skin is increased and optimised’ before administering the most blissfully calm facial I’ve ever had. As well as using a ground form of the stone to exfoliate skin, a whole stone is used to massage in the tourmaline charged radiance masque, and it’s undeniable that following the treatment, skin feels plump, smooth and uplifted and looks fabulously glowing.
In the wise words of Fox Mulder, ‘I want to believe’, but do you? Von Strunckel suggest that crystals could have found greater appeal as we learn to ‘step away from stuff for stuff’s sake and look for something different that has a story to it – live a more conscious life’. She continues, ‘The interest in crystals is that they’re not just stuff. They have a capacity to hold energy so a value beyond their existence as an object’.
You needn’t start wearing batik harem pants and adopt a spiritual name to get a step closer to enlightenment then. Just mix some focus, a natural gem and a dash of suspended disbelief into your everyday life, and you may just find yourself radiating a little more positivity and calm. Hey, if it works for VB…
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