Flash A Smile: The Return of Tooth Gems

At a crossroads between the cosmetics, and the tattoos and piercings industries - not exactly permanent but you don’t wipe it off before going to sleep at night – tooth gems are one of the many Y2K trends that have recently returned. This body modification is painless and relatively easy to achieve, and it appeals to teens, rappers and pop stars, bikers and sassy grandmas alike.

The daintier and more subdued offspring of grills allows individuals to fulfil their wish to be unique and to express themselves by modifying and accessorizing their appearance.

Teeth modifications are intriguing: they highlight a part of the body that so often is an insecurity: pre-teens scared to reveal a toothy smile when they have braces, people thinking their teeth are too yellow, or their smile too crooked. You name it.

Tooth gems are all about embracing our pearly whites, and instead of covering them up with grills or caps, we embellish them with shiny stones.  This latest addition to body positivity allows us to transform a ‘flaw’ into intricate, sparkly artistry with bling and strass.

 Michèle Lamy for Vice

Tooth adornments have been appearing, disappearing, and reappearing throughout history and the world. Coming back in fits and starts, they pranced in and out of fashion as civilisations rose and fell. More than just a fashion statement, mouth bling was imprinted with symbolism and possessed a strong signalling value.

Etruscan women of the 7th century BC sported delicately gold-woven teeth, mainly to show wealth and a form of (relative) emancipation. They would even get their teeth removed to wear the style.

Mayans adorned their teeth with precious stones like jade, gold, hematite and turquoise, a style obtained by drilling holes in their enamel. To them, this type of enhancement not only beautified its wearer, but also ensured prosperity. For Mayan royalty, the green of jade symbolised sustenance and plant growth, and teeth gems therefore served as a sign of duty and obligation towards their people. It was a visual and everlasting promise that everyone would be looked after.

The Filipinos’ gold-pegged teeth, achieved by hammering gold plates into the dentition, and the Chinese’s gold grills in a fish-scale pattern are other examples of ancient teeth jewellery.

Far from sparkle and shine, on the other hand, Vikings are believed to have filed their teeth to create ridges, sometimes enhanced by a black paste. This type of body modification was borne from a wish to express a sense of belonging, to build a strong group identity. They were possibly inspired by other populations they encountered in their travels, as signs of similar body modification were found in England, Denmark, and Sweden.

In Japan, the custom of ‘ohaguro’ was believed to preserve dentition and protect it against decay and yellowing. Japanese aristocracy’s black dyed teeth were also, and most importantly, a sign of coming of age, and a signal of wealth and social status.

Virtually no society or no region of the world escaped the custom of teeth modification.

 Polaroid selection by Piper Ellis

Tooth ornaments disappeared until the 70s before being adopted again by West Indian communities of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Flatbush etc. Black New Yorkers - also responsible for hip-hop’s inception around the same time - started replacing missing teeth with gold ones.

Just like that, what had been a dental necessity became a fashion statement. Grills were immediately associated with the music genre and culture. Often seen as ostentatious, they were the flashiest status symbol of the time, also participating in forming a group identity and sense of belonging. Eddie Plein and Johnny Dang were precursors of it, spinning the jewellery industry on its head and selling pieces to the most famous including Public Enemy’s Flava Flav, OutKast, Ludacris and later Gucci Mane, Kanye and Beyonce just to name a few.

by Jack Bridgland

Nelly’s ‘Grillz’ music and video clip played a major role in popularising mouth bling. Featuring more than 70 close-up shots of grills and starring Johnny Dang himself, it captured the precise moment when tooth accessories were brought into the American zeitgeist.

In Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, Chiron’s grills become an armour. As the character tries to make Black masculinity coincide with his own identity and sexuality, grills shield him from being demeaned. Similar to his car, his gun, and his job as a drug dealer, his teeth capped with flashy grills are a mere facade. Chiron says, I built myself back up from the ground up to be hard. His physical transformation, his accessories and his occupation are all a defence mechanism, a way to silence his inclinations and his true self and prove that he belongs to his world.

For some, grills tend towards the gaudy, the profoundly unnecessary and pointlessly excessive. This is perhaps where tooth gems come in, more minimalist and versatile but still possessing that power to express oneself.

Tooth gems are only one of the many Y2K trends having an encore. Micro-mini skirt, logomania, Dior saddle bags, Von Dutch caps, pencil-skinny brows, and the list goes on.

Usually, the renaissance of trends or a fashion era is brought up by nostalgia. However, Gen Z, the drivers of this comeback, were only babies in the early 2000s. The reason for this comeback could be that Y2K is synonymous with fun. After a pandemic, global lockdowns and isolation, rising polarization of the political discourse, the continued effects of racial injustice and the intensifying urgency of the climate crisis, having fun with fashion and style feels refreshing. The emotional strains of the past few years inevitably reshaped consumer needs towards escapism, and self-expression that allows us to go back to what we experienced as carefree times.

Blumarine’s comeback is a perfect illustration of this: it is ultra-femininity and cheeky sexiness at its best. Blumarine’s second coming appears as no surprise since the brand’s DNA aligns with a multitude of Gen Z fashion trends and with the growing wish to dress up more.

My Blumarine is more dirty, bitchy, sexier, Nicola Brognano said.

Blumarine Backstage by Pavel Golik

There are a plethora of signs that the fashion clock has completed a full rotation. In fact, it has been 20 years since Y2K, a duration that fashion historians consider to be that of fashion cycles.

Gen Z is coming of age and as it is doing so it is bringing back a whole series of new attitudes and comeback trends.

This isn’t Y2K, it’s Y2.02K: same but different. Consumers seem to be more mindful of problems like cultural appropriation and body shaming. While there still is a long way to go, trends are now adopted in a more respectful manner than in the early 2000s. This is a defining element of the fashion cycles, a specific era becoming trendy again implies that it has been revisited, updated according to the mores of the time. These trends are richer due to the advancements made prior to their revival.

Technological innovations and the omnipresence of social media allow trends to travel further and faster. The internet serves as an archive, as an infinite resource for style inspiration. The boom of the thrifting industry also means that shoppers are more likely to find timed pieces, inevitably bringing back fashion from another era. These elements combined could mean we’re moving towards a fashion clock that’s faster, transitioning to 15 or even 10-year cycles.

Or is the fashion cycle broken? Trends from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s are all coexisting as we speak, further disproving the theory of the 20-year cycle. The fabulousness of the 80s was followed by the minimalism of the early 90s then the glittery excess of Y2K then minimalism of the 2010s and now maximalism again. It could also be that fashion does not evolve like a clock but rather like a pendulum swing, oscillating between minimalism and maximalism, the same way the economy follows economic booms and recessions.