![]() ![]() Recently, I’ve gone through my deceased mother’s jewelry, finding her sparkling faux gemstone brooches from the 1950s and ’60s, now fashionable again. I never wore it to a funeral I thought solemnity warranted silence. I wore my bracelet to church, school dances, dinners out and weddings, enjoying the jingling whenever I moved my arm. The green-and-white “Savannah, Georgia” pendant conjured shrimp dinners and riverside strolls while visiting my aunt, my mother’s only sister. She marked my July birthday with a crimson medallion bearing a resin crab. ![]() My favorites were the colored charms, like the two-toned cat resembling our family’s Siamese, the cat my mother had always wanted. Jewelry Sales After Breaking $1 Billion in 2021.” Specializing in charms that clip on to bracelets, and also traditional dangling charms, Pandora is “the LEGO version of jewelry,” opined company president Luciano Rodembusch in the March 2, 2022, article. Today, while luxury jewelers sell many styles of charm bracelets in sterling silver and gold, Pandora dominates the market, with worldwide sales reaching $3.5 billion in 2021, according to reporting by Pamela Danziger for Forbes magazine in her article “How Pandora Plans to Double Its U.S. During the 1950s, the bracelets also became popular with teenagers. brought the fad to America, launching a trend that endured during the Depression and really took off after WWII when soldiers brought home European gift charms to spouses and girlfriends. The Royal Collection Trust holds several of Victoria’s such bracelets, notably the gold chain bracelet “with nine enameled heart-shaped lockets of different colors containing the hair of Queen Victoria’s children.” Centuries of practice changed with Queen Victoria.Īs historian Karen Harris phrases it, the monarch “single-handedly created a fashion craze across Europe,” inspiring European elites to wear decorative bracelets that were personally meaningful. In Roman times and for centuries, charms were worn (or carried) to identify religious, spiritual or superstitious beliefs. Fittingly, theirs were gold.Īs far back as 600 B.C., ancient cultures attached charms to leather wrist straps, probably as amulets Egyptians were buried with them as identification for the afterlife. According to jewelry historian Beth Bernstein, Elizabeth Taylor wore her own bracelet even while filming Giant, and Grace Kelly’s prop bracelet in Rear Window spawned copies at various prices.įirst Lady Mamie Eisenhower, to whom my mother related as an Army wife, was photographed frequently wearing hers. One reason that they were desirable, my mother said, was because movie stars and famous women wore them indeed, Natalie Wood, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis often wore theirs in Hollywood photographs. (She even bought miniskirts - no more than eight inches above the knee - for my sister and me, despite having to hand-hold our father.)Ĭharm bracelets had become a craze in the 1950s and were going strong in 1968 when I received mine. Big city department stores carried charms then, as did hotel gift shops and local jewelry stores. For eight years, we added sterling charms together, tangibly commemorating special events, trips and hobbies. When I turned 13, my mother bought me a sterling silver link bracelet. I’ve always liked the sound of jingling, like wind chimes or sleigh bells - or charm bracelets.
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