My only axiom with jewelry :

The diamond should shine like a star far far away in the galaxy. The pearl should shine like a moon on a cloudy night. The necklaces should sliver like a small streak of light across the cosmos. It shouldn’t shout, but have a lover’s whisper like quality about it.

I used to think of a pearl as a trinket you buy and sometimes wear.

Now, I think of it as the evidence of an oyster’s suffering.

All pearls are ulcers formed when an oyster is under stress from irritants. Cultured pearls are oysters grown in cages and irritated for years at a stretch. Some die in this process. All of them are subjected to stress from extraction. Some of them are “recycled” and forced to produce more pearls. Most of them get killed. Aquaculture stresses the natural ecosystems in which oysters thrive.

A pearl is not a trinket.

I haven’t purchased any jewelry in the last 3 years. And I don’t plan to, in the future because I have more than enough. In fact, I want to do the Swedish death cleaning. But then, the folks wiser with their money advice me on how precious metals are a good investment. If I plan to retire, I need to diversify my retirement portfolio. My position is ‘hold’ for now.

I enjoy jewelry in museums. It is an art form. I enjoy the archaeological artifacts excavated as remnants of our ancestors. I enjoy it in the fashion books.

My way of enjoying jewelry is by seeing it on other women. When you wear dainty jewelry, my eyes are happy. When you pair it in a cool way, I get to see something interesting. When you allow me to photograph you, I have a keepsake of the interesting outfit for myself to admire at my own pace.

A woman who thinks she is beautiful, is a beautiful woman. It’s a joy to watch women who aren’t regarded as conventional beauties embrace their bodies, own their personal style and dress up in the way they choose. I like how jewelry factors into this equation.

I adore the idea of wearing a jewel and never taking it off. Wear that signature piece for life or till you loose it. To build an attachment with the jewel. That was the intention when I bought a few of the pieces I own. I would have worn it for a few months and taken it off for some reason. And never retrieved it again. I am not a human who is capable of attaching myself to a jewel maybe ?

My default state of being is in my naked skin and wrapped in cloth. I don’t need jewels to feel pretty. I don’t need jewels to feel dressed up. I don’t need jewels to feel creative. My clothes are my jewels. I see the divine fabrics and it gives me a high that I would assume jewelry lovers get from the shiny metal. Navy blue cotton/silk/wool/cashmere outshines everything else you can put forth in front of me.

If I could get the money I paid for these pearls back, I would part with them. I understand the sunken cost fallacy, but I don’t want to waste my money. So I hold on to them for now. I want my nieces to some day ask for my jewelry. I hold on to them because there is that one day of the month when we do date night and I bring forth all the unusual things out of my closet to wear. These are nice to have.

I try to use what I own but am terribly failing at it. I start off the week by wearing a bracelet or earrings. But there is so little return in joy for the effort put in, that I can’t keep at it. I do breathe a sign of relief when I take it off. I like how light I feel without. I like how comfortable it is to nap when I don’t have anything on. I like now naked my skin looks without it all. But I keep trying coz I see subtle sparkle as a good design element to my outfits. I keep trying because I own it.

I had a draft blog post on jewelry written two years ago. It was very different in tone from this post. It talked about the right design, right aesthetic, right designers and the right proportions. I had so much to say. But I seem to have changed. I am not that consumer anymore. I am a climate activist looking for reasons to eschew stuff. I wouldn’t have cared about an oyster’s suffering. What is it to me really ? But I can use that fact as a reason to loosen the attachment and shift the narrative in my head. The more facts I gather, the easier it is the clean out the cobwebs of materialist thinking.

Lumpy clunky jewelry is not my thing to wear. I think I crave smooth lines, symmetry, sleekness and the modern look.

The pink pearl pendant is my most used jewel. It adds the subtle hit of pink to my navy blue canvas. It shines but not too much. It’s visible but only if I allow you into my personal space. It will poke you but only if I really hug you tight.

The thread pearl earrings were a part of a costume I envision when I wear my hair long. I wanted them to be in pink but gray was more subtle. They blend in. They sometimes peak out and show their charm. But for the most part, they hide in my mane. This is a feature, not a flaw.

The natural pearl chain necklace belongs to my mother. She gave it to me. It is not my style and I never wear them. I need to give it away to someone in the family who wants it. My mother is an ideology to me. She is not a person anymore. I don’t need unused things to remember her by. No thing that she owns does justice to what she is. Her ideas will survive. They amplify though me and the way I live my life. That is the relationship I have with her. We never do small talk. We don’t talk about what we cooked or ate or bought or the weather or gossip about what the people in our town are doing. We talk about what we learnt since the last phone call. We talk about a better world. We talk about achieving a better version of ourselves. We talk about problems and solutions. We talk about extra ordinary folk who did something compassionate…. I almost find it insulting to associate her with unused things. Her things should be given to someone who needs them and will use them the most. That action would be true to her spirit.

Pearls shine more if you wear them a lot. The interaction with the body heat polishes them up. Mine speak the truth. They don’t shine like they should. They live in a wooden box.

Winter is the time when I wear the most jewelry. Summer skin has a glow that does not need extra sparkle. But winter sucks the light out of my surrounds and me. To have objects that reflect extra light is welcome in my outfit. A black/navy turtle neck with a pearl is an extra-ordinary combination, in my opinion.

More inventory posts coming on the jewelry front. The idea of lumping them together was so vulgar that I am splitting them apart to feign understated elegance. The individual pieces may be subtle, but when I tried lumping them all together in one post, the excess of it all killed the essence of what they could have been had I owned less.