Bohemian jewellery, but enormous
Chunky ceramic beads, wide gold bangles and pendants shaped like a fish or a feather. After years of dainty chains, this is the swing back.
If you have spent the last few years being told that a fine gold chain was the tasteful choice, this season is your reprieve. The runways have gone the other way entirely: gold-tone everything, bangles wide enough to be architecture, chunky ceramic beads, and pendants shaped like a fish, a feather or a tooth. Anyone who has always dressed this way will tell you, correctly, that it never went anywhere.
The pleasure of it is that it is genuinely easy. A single large piece finishes a plain outfit in a way that three delicate ones never quite manage, and because the whole register is handmade and slightly irregular, it does not have to be expensive to look right. Irregularity is the aesthetic. That is not true of fine jewellery, where cheap and expensive look different at arm's length.
Two things to know before you buy, because both catch people out.
Weight. A ceramic or resin beaded necklace is heavier than it looks in a photograph, and worn all day it pulls at the back of your neck. If the strand is heavy, you want it on a wide, soft cord rather than a thin chain — a cord spreads the load across the neck instead of concentrating it in one line.
Bangle sizing. A rigid bangle has to pass the widest part of your hand, and almost every disappointed bangle purchase is this. Squeeze your hand into its narrowest shape, thumb tucked into the palm, and measure around the knuckles — that measurement, not your wrist, is the one that decides whether it goes on.
How to wear it
- One enormous thing, then stop. Giant necklace and giant bangles at once reads as a costume.
- Against plain, unfussy clothing — this needs empty space around it to look like a choice.
- Warm metals with warm colours: gold-tone against camel, cream, chocolate and denim.
Sources
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