I am 68, I have never been one for jewellery, and the first necklace I have ever written a letter about has just three pearls on it.
I am 68, I have never been one for jewellery, and the first necklace I have ever written a letter about has just three pearls on it.
Six things this little necklace gets right that fifty years of jewellery-shop windows never did, from a woman who spotted it across a table at her granddaughter’s graduation lunch.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
I had better say who is talking first. I am Pat, I am 68, and I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf. I keep an allotment, my hands are in the soil most days of the year, and I have never been one for jewellery. My wedding ring, a watch, and a string of beads I wear to funerals. That is the lot. So nobody is more surprised than me to be sat at the kitchen table writing to a boutique about a necklace.
The necklace I am writing about is the Charlotte, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly finding women like me the things we did not know we were allowed to have for a few years now. It is a vintage pearl necklace, and when the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw it at my granddaughter’s graduation. Ellie has done three years of nursing, and in October they put on their gowns in town and we all went for lunch after at a hotel near the station. At the next table was another graduate’s nan, about my age, in a plain navy dress. Round her neck were three fine strands, close at the collarbone, with three pearls gathered together at the front, two cream and one dark. Every time she turned to the window that dark one went green and blue. I spent half of my soup looking at it. I am not proud of that. I caught her in the ladies’ afterwards and asked her, plainly, where it was from. She told me straight away. That was enough for me. Read on.
Mine, at the next family do. Brian said I looked like I had been to a wedding. I took that as a compliment.
Here is what fifty years of walking past jewellery-shop windows taught me. Necklaces come in two piles. The proper ones, a big rope of pearls or a gold chain with a lump on it, that you save for a wedding and feel dressed up as somebody else in. And the bits and bobs, the fashion ones, that look like they came free with a magazine.
A necklace was either too grand for a woman who grows runner beans or too cheap-looking to bother with. I had stopped looking at them altogether.
This is the first one I have owned that sits in between. I have worn it to two family dos and a good few ordinary days since, and it comes down to six things.
The morning it came, still on its tissue in the box. Smaller than I expected, in the best way.
It is quiet, which is exactly why people notice it
There is no rope of pearls here. Three fine strands of tiny pale beads, the colour of the inside of an oyster shell, and on each strand just one pearl. That is the whole of it. Three pearls, gathered together a little off to one side, each slightly irregular in shape, which I prefer to the perfectly round sort. Nothing dangles, nothing swings, nothing shouts. For a woman who has always felt dressed up as somebody else in jewellery, that was the point. It looks like it belongs to me.
About to put it on for the second do. Three pearls, three fine strands, and that is the lot.
I have never worn much jewellery but this one I put on without thinking. Simple and pretty, and it does not try too hard.
Margaret T., StokesleyThe one dark pearl is the detail everybody asks about
Two of the pearls are cream, with that soft shine the boutique calls polished, and if that were all it would be pretty enough. But the top one is dark, nearly charcoal, and when the light catches it, it turns green and blue and a little purple, like a starling’s feathers. That is what I was staring at over my soup, and it is what two women have asked me about since. It is a small thing on a small necklace, and it makes the whole piece.
On my scarf on the kitchen windowsill, in the four o’clock sun. You can see why I stared.
The dark pearl is what sold it to me. It changes colour in the light and someone always comments on it.
Jean W., GuisboroughIt sits at the collarbone, so it shows with whatever you have on
This is the bit I did not expect to care about. The three strands sit close, just above the collarbone, the shortest at the base of the neck and the longest a finger or so lower. It is not a choker and it is not a long thing that ends up inside your blouse. So it shows above a round-neck dress, it sits inside an open shirt collar, and it peeps out between the fronts of a cardigan. I have not had to think once about which neckline it goes with.
A Tuesday, a cream blouse and my rust cardigan. Same necklace as the graduation.
Sits just right at the neck. I wear it with a round neck jumper and with my shirts and it looks right with both.
Christine B., Great AytonIt is light enough to forget about
The boutique says it is a lightweight design made for wearing all day, and I can vouch for that. Ellie’s ceremony was nearly two hours on a hard seat, then lunch, then photographs outside in the wind, and I did not touch it once. No pulling at the back of my neck, nothing digging in, nothing I had to keep straightening. Brian had to remind me I still had it on when I went down the garden to lock the shed.
So light I forget I am wearing it. I had it on from breakfast to bedtime at my nephew’s wedding and never noticed it once.
Susan K., PocklingtonDressy for the do, and ordinary for the Monday after
It looked right with my good plum dress at the graduation. On the Monday I wore it to the supermarket with a jumper and my old quilted coat, and it looked right there too. That is the thing the grand necklaces never managed. They only go to weddings. This one goes to the library, to lunch with my sister, to church at Christmas, and back in the little dish on my dressing table at night, where I can see it.
Where it lives, in the dish by the window. It does not get put away in a drawer and forgotten.
I bought it for a christening and I have worn it nearly every week since. Smart enough for best, easy enough for every day.
Pauline R., Market WeightonNo size to guess, so it is the easiest present I have bought in years
I am hopeless at presents for women. Clothes are a gamble on sizes, and scent is a gamble on noses. A necklace like this has no size at all, it comes in a plain little box, and it looks dearer than it was. I have ordered a second one and put it away for my sister June for Christmas, which is the first time in my life I have finished her present in October. Ellie has asked to borrow mine for her first night out on the town as a qualified nurse. She is not having it.
Bought one for myself and one for my daughter’s birthday. She has worn it every time I have seen her since.
Valerie H., HowdenThis necklace, against the ones you have been walking past
You can carry on with a grand necklace that only comes out for weddings, or a cheap one that looks it, like I did for fifty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Too grand for every day, or too cheap to bother
A heavy rope or chain you feel all day
Hangs too long or sits too tight
One look, one occasion
A gamble as a present
Three pearls, quietly vintage
A lightweight design for all-day wear
Sits at the collarbone, shows with any neckline
Dressy for the do, easy for the Monday after
No size to guess, the easiest present
About the price
The Charlotte is £24.95, down from £50.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that it is in their sale while the first autumn stock goes, and once it sells through, it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that the grand pearl necklace in the jeweller’s window on Briggate costs more than our first car, and I would never have worn it. £24.95 for one I actually put on made it an easy yes. Twice.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If you have spent fifty years telling yourself you are not a jewellery person, like I did, this is where I would start. Have a look before the first autumn stock goes, because it will not wait. And if you ever see a woman at a graduation lunch in Leeds staring at your neck over her soup, you will know who it is.
Pat
THE CHARLOTTE NECKLACE
- Three fine strands, three pearls, vintage-inspired
- One dark pearl and two cream, with a soft polished shine
- Sits at the collarbone, shows with any neckline
- Lightweight design for all-day wear
- No size to guess, an easy present
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.