What Wendy Wore: Hanging With My Vegas Gems

I’m still recovering from JCK Las Vegas, the gigantic jewelry trade show that took place over the weekend. It’s not Vegas-style partying that exhausts me. It’s seeing hundreds of thousands of jewelry styles in one place that’s exhausting!

The highlight of any JCK experience is meeting up with my group of amazing social-media wimmin friends, the Vegas Gems — or, as member Barbara Palumbo of Adornmentality now calls us, the geminists. A bunch of us met for dinner at Jaleo at the Cosmopolitan.

From left: Designer Shamila Jiwa, JCK’s Brittany Siminitz, Barbara Palumbo of Adornmentality, and Peggy Jo Donahue of MJSA.

Barbara and I posed for our mandatory duckface photo. We do one whenever we see each other.

Quack quack quack.

Then Monica Stephenson of iDazzle ushered us all into a limo to join more jewelry peeps at the Wynn.

Sitting: Brittany Siminitz, Jessica Neiwert, some friendly fellas, Monica Stephenson. Lying down: Barbara Palumbo. My gold-shod foot in the right corner.

Once again, I had Craig Selimotic Danforth from the Gemological Institute of America model my latest ring. This is your first peek at my new Dragon and Knight Maneater ring, paired with a nice photobomb by jewelry designer and writer Erika Winters.

Nice kissy face, Erika!

Erika is an expert-level photobomber!

Craig isn’t deterred from his hand-modeling job.

The jewelry world and the cat world collided that night, thanks to jewelry expert Jessica Neiwert. She is also the “meowmie” of Copper Kitty, a close Instagram friend of Fitzroy and Purrkoy.

We couldn’t stop talking about cats.

I figured Vegas was a good place to dress as a VIP.

What Wendy Wore
Dress: Vintage Moschino Couture from KatyKane.com (2011, previously seen here)
Shoes: Prada (2010)
Jewelry: My own designs

The other Vegas event that gives me a big thrill is JCK Rocks the Beach, the annual concert in the Mandalay Bay wave pool. For the second year in a row, I was pretty much the only Gem who went in the pool. Sigh. They don’t know what they’re missing.

Before the show, I posed with JCK’s Brittany Siminitz because we were both wearing brown gladiator sandals.

What Wendy Wore
Top: Versace (probably pre-2005)
Shorts: Current/Elliott (2014)
Sandals: Purchased in Greece (2014)

I had a fun time talking about gladiator sandals with Brittany. As I told her,  I’ve been obsessed with gladiators since 1985 …  a year before she was born.

By the way, I’m not wearing a weird blue choker in the photo with Brittany. That’s just the lanyard for my JCK ID badge, which was flipped around to the back. My real neckwear was very popular. I keep layering more and more gold necklaces together, and a lot of people asked me about the look in Vegas. Erika took a picture.

There’s another new design hidden in here.

The performers at JCK Rocks the Beach are always secondary to the experience of being in the wave pool. The first year I went, we had Maroon 5. Last year, it was Rob Thomas. I knew one song by each of them. For Gavin DeGraw this year, I knew zero songs.

I walked down to the front.

I enjoyed myself anyway, and Gavin was a good sport about dodging the occasional glow stick thrown his way. He also invited everyone to splash him. It was hot on stage.

I zoomed in to take this picture of Gavin DeGraw.

I’m looking forward to next year’s JCK weekend already.