Dresses, hair bands, phone cases, and many other women's fashion items often include pearl decorations, adding elegance and sophistication to the style. The acrylic pearls used in them are plastic materials that only imitates the color of the pearl, and because they are very light in weight, you can quickly notice that they are imitation pearls. However, there are imitation pearls that are much more sophisticated and difficult to distinguish from real cultured pearls, such as Majorca, Swarovski, and shell pearls.
These elaborate imitation pearls are created by mimicking the process by which real cultured pearls are made. Instead of shell beads, glass beads are used as the nuclei, and then they are coated repeatedly with dye to simulate the process of a mollusk layering nacre onto a nuclei. As a result, these imitation pearls not only resemble the color but also the weight of cultured pearls. However, imitation pearls can be distinguished by their overly perfect appearance and messy coating around the holes.
If Japan is the birthplace of cultured pearls, Spain is best known for imitation pearls, and the island of Mallorca is home to some of the most famous manufacturers. The top three to four companies are competing, especially the leading company with over 100 years of history has stores worldwide and directly interacts with customers. In addition, Austria's Swarovski also produces excellent imitation pearls and supplies them to corporate customers from luxury brands to small and medium-sized brands. Finally, shell pearls are different from other imitation pearls in that they are made by coating real shell powder onto actual shell bead, although they are still classified as imitation pearls as they are artificially produced.