Why saving your jewellery for special occasions is a mistake
If you are wondering when to wear your good jewellery, the short answer is: today. On a Tuesday. To go to work, to take the bins out, to have lunch with your mother. A handmade piece doesn't get ruined by being worn; it becomes yours. What leaves it in a bad place is spending years in a drawer waiting for an occasion that, when it finally comes, is hardly ever worth the wait.
It sounds like a pretty line, but there is a fairly down-to-earth logic behind it. Let's take it slowly: what “good jewellery” actually means, why the drawer doesn't protect what we think it protects, where the habit of putting things away comes from, and what really changes in a piece when you wear it a thousand times instead of three.
The short answer: a piece starts to make sense when you put it on
A piece of jewellery in a drawer is an object on pause. It fulfils one function, being kept safe, and none of the others. It doesn't keep you company, it doesn't make you feel a certain way, it doesn't adapt to your body, it isn't tied to any memory. It is waiting.
The trouble with waiting is that special occasions are fairly thin on the ground. A wedding, maybe two. A work dinner. A big birthday every few years. If a piece only comes out for those, in ten years you might have worn it for twenty hours. Twenty hours of useful life for something that was cut with a piercing saw, soldered, filed, polished and gilded by hand, one by one, in a workshop in Madrid.
In other words, the question shouldn't be “what occasion is it for?” but “am I going to wear it?”. That is why, when someone asks us which piece to choose from all the pieces in the catalogue, we always answer with the same question: what can you picture yourself walking out of the door in on any old Thursday?
What “good jewellery” actually means
There is a basic misunderstanding here worth clearing up, because it is the one that pushes pieces into the drawer.
Good doesn't mean expensive
Many people use “good jewellery” to mean “expensive jewellery”, and conclude that it has to be protected from use. But price measures other things: the material, the hours of work, the size of the workshop, the middlemen. It doesn't measure how well a piece copes with everyday life, and it doesn't measure what the piece means to you.
There are simple earrings, made of brass with 24-carat gold plating, that cope perfectly well with a week of office, bike and dinner. And there are very expensive pieces nobody dares take out of the box. The difference isn't in the price bracket; it is in the design and in how you relate to the piece.
What does make a piece good
If we had to sum it up in four points, they would be these:
- It is well made. The soldering holds, the clasps close, the finish is what it says it is. In our case: matte brass, white bronze plating, 24-carat gold plating and a final hypoallergenic coating.
- It is comfortable. A sensible weight, clasps that don't dig in, nothing that catches in your hair or your scarf. An uncomfortable piece ends up in the drawer, however beautiful it is.
- You put it on without thinking. If every time you pick it up you have to decide whether the plan deserves it, something went wrong in the choice.
- It says something to you. It reminds you of someone, a moment, a decision. That can't be measured, but it is what turns an object into a talisman.
Notice that none of the four has anything to do with occasions. They all have to do with use.
Why the drawer doesn't protect what we think it protects
Instinct says that putting something away is looking after it. And it is partly true: a piece in its place, dry and not rubbing against anything, is better off than one loose at the bottom of a bag. But there are three things the drawer doesn't do.
It doesn't keep the value, it parks it
A piece of jewellery isn't a financial asset that grows in value on its own. Its value is of another kind: aesthetic, emotional, symbolic. And that value only builds up with use. A piece you have worn on four hundred different days has something an untouched piece doesn't have, and it isn't wear: it is history.
This isn't romanticism. Ask anyone which is their most precious piece and they will rarely point to the most expensive one. They will point to the one their grandmother wore every day, or the one they haven't taken off for ten years.
Storing badly damages too
A shared drawer is a place where pieces rub against each other, clasps get tangled, enamels get knocked and chains get knotted. The damage a messy drawer does over five years is no smaller than the damage of wearing the piece.
If you are going to store, store well: each piece in its own pouch or compartment, somewhere dry, not piled up. But don't let storing well become an excuse for not wearing. There is more on this in our frequently asked questions.
It makes you forget
This is the quietest effect. A piece you don't wear drops out of your mental repertoire. You don't see it when you get dressed, it doesn't occur to you, it isn't part of how you go out into the world. The next year you don't even remember it when you open the drawer. It isn't broken: it has become invisible.
Where the habit of putting jewellery away comes from
Nobody decides one day to lock their jewellery away. It is a fairly specific cultural inheritance, and it is worth understanding, because once you understand it, it is easier to let go of.
Jewellery as wealth
For centuries, jewellery was a way of keeping portable wealth. In an economy without easy access to banks, gold in the shape of an earring was savings. And savings, by definition, aren't spent: they are kept safe. That is where the lined jewellery box, the safe and the phrase “this is for special occasions” come from.
That logic made complete sense at the time. Today, applied to a contemporary designer piece, it makes none. A piece of designer jewellery isn't a gold bar: it is an object designed to be worn.
The fear of ruining it
The second driver is fear. Fear of losing it, of scratching it, of it losing its shine, of it catching on something. It is a legitimate fear and, at the same time, rather out of proportion with what actually happens.
What really damages a piece isn't everyday wear. It is one-off accidents and carelessness: a hard knock, a harsh chemical, sleeping in a long earring, the bag where everything rattles around loose. That is avoided with three or four simple habits, not by giving up wearing it.
The occasion as permission
And the third, the most interesting one: many people need an outside excuse to dress up. A wedding gives permission. A Tuesday doesn't. As if dressing well for yourself were an excess that has to be justified.
This is the part we most want to take apart, because it is exactly the opposite of how we understand the reason the brand exists. The beauty of everyday life isn't something separate from use: it is something shaped by it.
Cost per wear: the sum almost nobody does
There is a very unpoetic way of looking at it, and it works.
Take a piece and divide what it cost by the number of times you have worn it. An eighty-euro piece you wear three times a year comes to a little over twenty-six euros per wear. The same piece, worn twice a week, comes to less than one euro.
The same sum applies to the cheap pieces you buy every season, wear four times and end up broken or dull. There, the cost per wear is very high, even if the price on the label was low.
The conclusion is not very glamorous but very useful: the best-value piece in your jewellery box is the one you wear. And so the most sensible way to choose isn't “how much does it cost” but “how many times am I going to wear it”. Seen this way, our selection of best sellers is a fairly honest list: they are the pieces people come back to, and people come back to what they wear.
What happens to a piece when you really wear it
This is the part that almost never gets told, because it goes against the idea of the flawless object.
It adapts to you
A hoop you wear every day settles to your ear. A ring finds its place on your finger. A choker settles into the hollow of your neck. It isn't magic: it is a metal object living with a body for years. And the result is a piece you put on without thinking, that doesn't bother you, that you no longer notice.
That is the point where the piece stops being something you have put on and becomes part of who you are in the morning.
It becomes recognisable
People start to associate you with it. “Those earrings of yours.” That recognition is impossible with a piece that comes out three times a year; it needs repetition. And it is probably the greatest return a piece of jewellery can give you: becoming a sign of you.
It takes on more roles
A piece isn't just decoration. It has an aesthetic role, yes, but also one of self-esteem and confidence. And very often it has been, and still is, a keeper of secrets: the one you wear on the day of the difficult meeting, the one you were given when you broke up with someone, the one you haven't taken off since your daughter was born.
All those layers are built by wearing it. None of them is built in the drawer.
The most common excuses, one by one
“It's too much for every day”
Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's a habit. If the piece is big and you feel uncomfortable wearing it in the supermarket queue, the problem isn't everyday life: it is that you chose a piece for a character you aren't the rest of the time.
The answer isn't to put it away, it is to widen your repertoire. There are pieces with character that work in any setting because they are discreet in form, not in intention: that is where collections like Silence come in, designed precisely for that, to be worn every day without explanations.
“I'm afraid of losing it”
It is the most reasonable fear of all, and it is worth facing head-on: yes, you could lose an earring. It happens.
Two things about that. First, most losses happen in specific, avoidable situations: taking your coat off somewhere crowded, sleeping away from home, sport, the sea. If you take the piece off at those moments, the risk drops a lot. The second, and less comfortable: a piece kept in a drawer for fifteen years has also been lost, just more slowly and more sadly.
“I'm waiting for the right occasion”
This is the one to nip in the bud. The occasion isn't going to be any better than today. The pieces are made to be worn completely naturally: to walk, jump, dance, run for the bus, work at what you love and at what you love a little less, wait, come home early or in the small hours, laugh so much you think you might run out of breath.
And to wear the same piece long enough for it to adapt to your shape, to your way of being, and become familiar.
How to get your jewellery out of the drawer in one afternoon
It is a simple and rather revealing exercise. Half an hour.
- Empty the whole drawer onto the bed. Everything. The good, the so-so and the things you had forgotten.
- Make three piles: what you wear, what you don't wear but like, and what you don't wear and don't like either.
- With the third pile, decide. If it is broken and has no sentimental value, out it goes. If it means something to someone else, give it to them. But before you take anything out of your life, think about a fourth way: many of those pieces can be transformed. In the workshop we can rebuild a piece you no longer like as it is, or melt it down to make a new one. Above all the ones with sentimental value: you don't have to choose between keeping them without wearing them and letting them go. What you are never going to wear takes up mental space, not just physical space.
- With the second pile, ask why. There is usually a specific reason: it is heavy, the clasp doesn't work, it doesn't go with anything you wear, or it feels “too much”. The first three can be fixed. The fourth is just a habit.
- Choose three pieces and leave them in sight. Not in the drawer: on a little dish, by the front door, next to your watch. What you can see, you wear.
- Try them for a week in a row on ordinary days. Work, errands, dinner at home. By the seventh day you will know which ones join your repertoire and which don't.
For the ones that don't make it, the problem is most likely the type of piece, not the piece itself. If you change your earrings every day, a comfortable hoop will give you much more than something that requires a decision; our earrings come in very different formats for exactly that reason.
So what about weddings and job interviews?
None of the above means you shouldn't dress up for a wedding. It means something else: that day is one more day the piece keeps you company, not the only moment it leaves the drawer.
There is a practical difference between the two ways of thinking about it. If you buy a piece “for the June wedding”, you are buying a costume with an expiry date; once June is over, it goes back in the box. If you buy a piece you love and wear it for the first time at the June wedding, you have bought something that will still be in your life in July, in November and four years from now.
The same goes for the office and for job interviews. A piece you wear every day conveys confidence because it is already part of you; a piece worn for the first time that morning shows, and it shows that you are trying hard. It isn't a great aesthetic argument, but it is a pretty good one.
Looking after it without locking it away
Wearing it every day doesn't clash with looking after it. It comes down to four habits, and they become second nature within a week:
- Last on, first off. Cream, perfume and hairspray first; the piece afterwards. And when you get home, off it comes.
- As little water as possible. The shower, the pool and the sea are no place for jewellery. Not because it is fragile, but because there is no reason to put it through that.
- A soft, dry cloth now and then. Nothing harsh. Our pieces have a final hypoallergenic coating, and the enamels are painted by hand with bisphenol-free resins; neither needs strong products.
- Each piece in its place. Apart, dry, not piled on top of each other.
That covers almost everything. The rest is wearing it.
Why we insist so much on this
Because it is the starting point for how things are designed here. The pieces come out of a workshop at Calle Alameda 4, in Madrid's Barrio de las Letras, where we work slowly and in short runs, one piece at a time. They are cut with a piercing saw, soldered with a torch, shaped by hand, filed, polished, matted and gilded. Only then does the enamelling begin, layer by layer.
It is a process that makes no sense at all if the result ends up in a drawer. All that time goes into making the piece last, not into making it shine for one afternoon. If you would like to see how it is done, the workshop is an open kitchen: you can come in, watch and ask, and it is told in detail on the workshop page.
In a world where everything moves at breakneck speed, finding a small oasis of time is rare. A piece that stays with you for years, adapts to your shape and ends up feeling familiar is a modest and rather effective way of having one.
When to wear your good jewellery: today, and tomorrow, and on the Thursday when nothing happens. Saving it for special occasions doesn't protect it; it switches it off. A well-made piece doesn't wear out with everyday use; it adapts, becomes recognisable and gathers meaning. The drawer, on the other hand, adds nothing.
If, reading this, you have thought of a specific piece you haven't taken out for years, you already know the plan for tomorrow morning.
