REMEMBER ME THIS WAY

A brooch containing Elvis's DNA may be the latest thing, but, says

The Newest fashion accessory, available later this year, will be jewellery containing DNA taken from the hair of the famous - anyone from Charles I to Marilyn Monroe. These "genetic collectables" are being developed in America, where the concept of turning celebrity genes into earrings, pendants, watches, and even phone cards has proved controversial. Though using DNA might be a 20th-century phenomenon, human hair jewellery is a long established tradition, and was something of a British speciality in the 19th century.

"Touch this," says Anne Louise Luthi, "the sensation is amazing, it doesn't feel like anything else." She holds out a 19th-century bracelet, intricately woven, springy to the touch, and made from the hair of a long-dead Victorian miss.

Mrs Luthi, is one of the world's major, and few, collectors of hair jewellery. Her passion began seven years ago when her mother-in-law died leaving her some money. Luthi bought a 19th-century mourning ring, inset with a lock of hair, in her memory. "I never set out to become a collector," she insists. "I just became fascinated by the idea of using hair as decoration and now I've got more than 250 pieces - it really is the most captivating substance."

Hair has always had a talismanic value. The ancient Greeks and Romans left clippings of their hair on altars as gifts to the gods, a ritual that survives today in the shaving of nuns' and monks' heads. At funerals, mourners would offer a lock in tribute, and in many cultures it was customary to preserve cuttings from the head of the deceased.

Commemorative jewellery incorporating hair first became fashionable in Britain in the 17th century, stimulated by the execution of Charles I, when royalists demonstrated their loyalty by sporting rings and badges containing strands from the monarch's severed head. "It was a British version of the Catholic reliquary," explains art historian Nigel Llewellyn, author of The Art of Death (Reaktion Books, pounds 9.95). "The veneration of St Bernard's big toe and other saintly bones was made illegal in Britain during the Reformation - it was thought of as the height of popish superstition. Hair jewellery was a secular, less gruesome form of European relic culture. People preserved the hair of cult figures such as Charles I or Nelson, and also of their own loved ones."

Much of Luthi's collection is commemorative - poignant and intimate family jewellery recording the loss of parents and children, and providing a fascinating picture of how the visual interpretation of death has developed over the centuries. One of her earliest pieces is a 17th-century stick pin, with a golden skull and crossbones resting on a bed of plaited hair, under crystal. "The decoration was supposed to remind you of the transience of life; on hair jewellery of this period you often find skeletons, coffins and other memento mori symbols," explains Luthi.

By the 18th century, the prevailing fashion was neo-classical and death imagery had became less morbid. Luthi's collection includes a variety of rings and brooches, composed of beautiful little sepia miniatures painted on ivory. Ladies in classical dress stand weeping over Grecian urns, in romantic landscapes, framed with pearls - the symbol of tears. The hair is either contained in a compartment, or forms part of the picture itself, often twisted into a weeping willow, a favourite image of grief.

As well as bearing palliative mottoes like "Not lost but gone before", or "Fate snatched her early to pitying skies", the jewellery is marked with the names and dates of the dead - all too frequently children. "Jewellery often commemorates more than one death," says Luthi. "It is sad when it's children, but I don't think it's morbid collecting pieces - if anything I'm preserving their memory."

The 19th century was a golden age for manufacturers of commemorative jewellery. When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria plunged into a long period of the strictest and blackest grief and jet was the only jewellery allowed at court. The public followed the royal lead, and mourning became the height of fashion. "Since the mortality rate was high, especially for children, some women could spend most of their lives in black," explains Allison Massey, who specialises in Victorian jet jewellery. Social conventions were strict - with accessories to match. "A lot of the jewellery was beautifully made and very expensive. It was a way for the emerging middle classes to express their superiority, even in death," says Massey. On her glittering black stall at Grays Antique Market in London, large jet lockets, inscribed with the monogram IMO (in memory of), open up to reveal yellowing photographs, locks of hair arranged in the popular Prince of Wales feather pattern, or sometimes an empty compartment. "Many dealers remove personal contents," says Massey. "Modern buyers can get squeamish when confronted by somebody's hair."

The Victorians suffered no such qualms. In the 19th century, hair was not just preserved under glass in finely jewelled lockets and rings, but, using a technique very similar to lace-making, was elaborately woven into everything from bracelets to earrings.

"I had my ears pierced especially for these," says Luthi of a pair of chestnut hair filigree earrings. "They are lovely to wear and light as a feather." The hair in dozens of pieces in her collection, varies in technique, texture and tone, from brown to blonde, to a butterfly brooch in the purest old lady white. "This colour was particularly prized and always the most costly," says Luthi.

Many of the pieces are finely mounted, with gold clasps and fittings. "There were specialist jewellers to whom you could send the hair of your choice to be made up. Or you could do it yourself," she explains. In The Lock of Hair, a manual for amateurs published in 1871, the author recommended the second alternative, since "unscrupulous tradesmen" had been known to replace the hair of the dear departed with that of a stranger if there wasn't enough to make up a particular pattern. Like wigmakers, hair artists would buy in human hair and hair peddlers were said to scour the country, looking for those who wanted to sell. Old people in alms houses were stated to be a good source for white, and some traders even resorted to grave robbing, although the hair from all but the most recently dead was considered inferior in quality.

Some of Luthi's pieces are commemorative or sentimental, others bought as anonymous fashion items. The original owners of the hair are all dead and buried, and touching, not to say wearing, a part of their bodies is certainly a disturbing idea. Luthi admits that few people share her enthusiasm although from a collecting point of view, this can be an advantage. "The subject isn't popular, so you don't get fakes and any burglar who came in wouldn't be the slightest bit interested, I keep my collection in the bedroom not in the bank."

A widow with grown-up children, Luthi can now devote herself to finding new pieces. She buys from jewellery dealers and antiques fairs and has paid from pounds 15 for a Victorian hair bracelet to pounds 2,000 for an 18th-century mourning brooch set with diamonds. "Nowadays, dealers come to me first with their best bits. If I don't buy them, who will?"

Luthi is not alone in her passion. The genetic jewellery being developed in the US is the brainchild of celebrity hair enthusiast John Reznikoff. An archivist at Connecticut University, he began collecting hair eight years ago, scouring the salerooms for locks of the great and the dead. He now has more than 100 examples, from figures as diverse as Nelson (whose strands cost pounds 4,400 at auction), to the Apache chief Geronimo, to Elvis. His Presley clipping is from that famous moment in rock culture when Elvis's greased rebel locks were shorn for entry into the US army.

Reznikoff's collection might have remained little more than an unusual private hobby, were it not for a chance encounter on breakfast television, with Nobel prize-winning scientist and DNA expert Dr Kary Mullis. The two men pooled their specialities and the result is StarGene, a San Francisco-based company devoted to the manufacture and marketing of "unique consumer bio-collectables containing the genetic essence of the stars". Whatever the ethical implications of selling DNA extracted from this ancient hair, cloning is not a possibility, and decoratively speaking, StarGene's DNA products seem likely to be on a par with the emperor's new clothes - invisible to the naked eye. The company processes it in the form of crispy white powder which is then enclosed in a gene stone. "A touchstone to the spirit of the celebrity" claims the press release.

StarGene is currently seeking sponsorship to help develop their celebrity collectables, but Anne Louise Luthi will not be investing. Could she imagine owning an Abraham Lincoln watch, a pair of Marilyn Monroe earrings or perhaps even a Charles I phone card? "I don't think so," she says with a shiver in her voice. "Frankly the whole thing sounds quite appalling!"

Allison Massey, Victorian Jet Jewellery, Stand 376, Grays Antique Market, 58 Davies St, London W1Y 1LB, tel: 0171 493 1634. Charlotte Sayers, Antique Jewellery, also at Grays, 0171 499 5478