Hollywood · Friendship · · 2 min read
Margaret O’Brien, in Swoboda
The MGM child star of Meet Me in St. Louis appears again and again in Nate Waxman’s archive — at lunches, galas and award nights, wearing Swoboda.
Open Nate Waxman’s photo albums at almost any page and one face keeps appearing: Margaret O’Brien.
To moviegoers of the 1940s she was the most famous little girl in America — MGM’s child star of Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), winner of a special Juvenile Academy Award, the Beth of Little Women (1949). To Nate she was something rarer in Hollywood: a friend who kept showing up.
The pictures
Here she is in velvet, a gold Swoboda sea-star brooch pinned high on her shoulder. Here she is over lunch with Nate, a gold Swoboda necklace at her collar. Here she is beside Patty Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, and with Tammy Faye Bakker, both women pinned with brooches; here, holding an award plaque between Nate and Randell Malone. In a quieter frame she stands in a room with floral wallpaper, under a gilt-framed portrait, a jeweled Swoboda pin on her scarf.
It is not a campaign. Nobody styled these photographs. That is exactly why they are so persuasive: this is how Swoboda was actually worn — to the party, to lunch, to the award dinner — by a woman who could have worn anything.
The Swoboda look
Margaret O’Brien’s Swoboda is classic Swoboda: genuine stones in warm 24k gold plate, cut and clustered so they read from across a room. Sea stars and flowers, crosses and sprays, set with pearl, coral, garnet and jade. Statement pieces that still feel personal.
Real gems. The real look.
Wear it the way she did
The modern way to wear a Swoboda brooch is the way Margaret did: on a dark collar, high on the shoulder, on a scarf or a lapel — one bold piece, nothing competing with it. Start with the brooches, or the statement pieces that most recall her photographs.
Photographs from the private collection of Nate Waxman. Appearance in the archive does not imply endorsement.
