About Carole Tanenbaum

An eye, before a business

Born and raised in New York, Carole worked as a child psychologist and as an art consultant before jewelry became her life's work. "When I started, I never expected to have a business," she recalls. She fell in love with costume jewelry, and she still collects with an art lover's eye: every piece is hand-selected for design, creativity and exceptional workmanship.

Building the collection, for decades

After Carole had gathered about 3,500 pieces, she asked Holt Renfrew about a trunk show. The president of the company offered her something larger: her own department, which she ran for some twenty years. Over time her collection has been showcased at Saks, Barneys, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. Today it holds over 50,000 pieces, from signed jewels by Chanel, Dior, Schiaparelli, Miriam Haskell, Hobé, Boucher, Trifari and Schreiner to Bakelite, Scottish Victorian and Czech jewelry, as well as limited-edition and one-of-a-kind pieces.

Worn on the world's stage

On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, Michelle Obama wore a Victorian paste sash pin from the collection at the neckline of her Isabel Toledo ensemble. She went on to wear a Hattie Carnegie silk flower brooch and a Schreiner brooch from the collection as well.

On screen, Carole's jewelry has appeared in the film Chicago, HBO's Grey Gardens, Sex and the City 2 and Suits, and most recently in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, where an Oscar de la Renta multi-chain necklace from the collection makes its screen debut. The cast of Schitt's Creek, Catherine O'Hara among them, wore CTVC on set and in promotional shoots; Priyanka wore the collection on the stage of Canada's Drag Race: All Stars; and the CTVC team helped realize the Victorian Gothic jewelry for a film costumed by Kate Hawley.

Sarah Jessica Parker has collected Carole's pieces since the Sex and the City years and wore them to the Tokyo premiere of Sex and the City 2 and to the amfAR gala in New York. Natalie Portman carried a CTVC Lucite clutch at the 2009 Academy Awards, Sonequa Martin-Green chose CTVC earrings and a Sherman cuff for the 2018 Creative Arts Emmys, and Nelly Furtado wore the collection on the red carpet at the Latin Billboard Awards. Shania Twain, Janelle Monáe, Demi Lovato, Molly Ringwald, Brooke Lynn Hytes and Anna Lambe have all worn CTVC too.

In museums and in the press

In 2018 and 2019, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston acquired an important collection of vintage costume jewelry from Carole. That gift became the starting point for Dress Up (2024), the museum's exhibition of fashion and jewelry, which put 60 of her pieces on view. In Toronto, CTVC curated a selection of 1950s jewels for the TIFF Bell Lightbox exhibition Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess and showed pieces in Burn with Desire: Photography and Glamour at the Image Centre (then the Ryerson Image Centre). In New York, the collection was presented in collaboration with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Carole has lectured at the Royal Ontario Museum, including a four-part series on costume jewelry from the Victorian era to the present, at the Textile Museum of Canada and for the International Society of Appraisers. The collection has appeared on The Marilyn Denis Show and ABC's The Chew, and in the pages of Vogue, ELLE Canada, People, W, Glamour, FLARE, Toronto Life, House & Home and Kinfolk. In 2023, Waddington's held an auction devoted to jewelry from her collection.

A life of collecting

With her husband, Howard, Carole has also collected photography, quilts and hooked rugs. Their photography collection was the subject of the exhibition and book True to the Eyes: The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Photography Collection at Toronto's Ryerson Image Centre, and Carole has donated hooked rugs and quilts to the Textile Museum of Canada.

The collection today

The collection lives in Toronto and online, where new pieces are added regularly. The website shows only part of what Carole holds, so if you're looking for a particular designer, era or style, send Carole a note using the form below. Private viewings are available by appointment in Toronto, ON, Canada.