My grandma Ruth is quite literally the monarch of the King family, and she knows her way around a necklace, or seven. Her mother, sporting her heavy Polish-Bolivian-New York accent, was the ultimate Chichipulka – a term my family coined to describe the Fancy Nancy of the 1900s, aka a woman who loves fashion, jewelry, and glamor so much that she made sure not to chip a nail when she gave birth. Don’t confuse Chichipulkas as not being the sharpest tool in the shed, though. These women look fabulous on the outside while being trilingual geniuses.
As I get older and pass age milestones, my grandma keeps the Chicipulka spirit alive by passing down pieces of jewelry that her mother gave her to me, my sister, and my cousins. 2023 fashion trends are all still predicting quiet luxury to carry on into the fall, and I couldn’t be happier to be sporting generational jewelry at this moment. While I have been wearing unique and meaningful pieces for a while now (shoutout Ruthie), I can’t help but chuckle that this trend pops up in 2023. Bye bye, Cartier Love Ring.
So what is quiet luxury? It’s the antithesis of two loud and proud overlapping “G”s centered on your small leather shoulder bag. While the price remains the same of luxury pieces, ideals of quiet luxury are focused on timeless, incredibly well made pieces that hide any overt whiffs of opulence. This way of dressing maintains a facade of “I blend in” while making sure you know that their brandless trench coat is well over two grand. Like a vegan who wears a fur coat. Kidding!
Entering into this new era of quiet luxury, generational jewelry has never been more well-situated. What better way to have incredible pieces that stand the test of time than literally walking around with a ring that your great grandmother wore to her sister’s wedding …. A bajillion years ago?
I talked to my grandma about the jewelry she wears and passes down, and she smiled as she recounted stories of Sweet Sixteens and college graduations. She pointed to the ring that she wears on her pinky and told me that when my uncle was six, he bought her a five dollar ring on his way home from school for Mother’s Day. She hasn’t taken it off since. When I turned twenty, my grandma deconstructed a charm bracelet she got from her mother when she was fifteen and made it into a necklace for me. My charm necklace is so incredibly linked to my grandma and her life that it transcends being just a piece of jewelry and becomes an immediate memory of her lying close to my heart. She included charms of a paint brush, ballet flats, a guitar, and a few other secrets that reveal our similarities. My sister also got a charm necklace with a statement graduation-cap that my grandma was gifted when she too graduated from college. My cousin got married and used Ruth’s parents’ wedding bands, and when my other cousin graduated from med school, she was given the watch that my doctor grandfather wore to work every day. My other cousin – yes, I have many – wears a necklace with one delicate charm that reads “Ruth Salomon,” my grandma’s Sweet Sixteen gift. Whenever any member of the King extended clan steps outside, we always ooze Ruthie.
Passing down jewelry holds such a nostalgic and acute grip on me; I feel like a sponge when I hear family stories of times before I was born, and my head explodes when I get to touch rings that my infamous great-grandma wore when she was my age. So why do people pass down their jewelry? At first, when talking to my friends, we all went straight to the price tag. It makes sense that family members pass down real gold and silver. But I suddenly disagreed after talking to Ruth a few days before, because the price of metal had nothing to do with the reason she passed down her jewelry. I giggled as she showed me her embossed, sapphire ring that she has worn for as long as I could remember, telling me that the jewel was absolutely fake. I had never wanted to wear a ring more in my entire life.
The price of that ring she wears means nothing to me. I can picture it so vividly on my grandma’s finger as she pours her fifth cup of seltzer, no ice, into her cup. The ring has Ruthie all over it, and that means more to me than any number ever could. People pass down jewelry because it is a physical manifestation of someone’s lineage. Sure, I share a last name with my grandma, but the jewelry she wears and shares intimately ties me to my history and my grandma in such a tactical way. Her jewelry is an expression of her as much as they are aesthetic objects. What more perfect way to achieve a quiet luxury aesthetic than to wear a necklace that your great-grandmother wore as a child, that no one else owns, that has been worn in so much her skin prints are still engraved into the metals, with the added bonus of holding so much love and history? The quietest luxury of all is that which no one even knows exists – it’s the delicate charm that sits on your wrist and will sit on your kids’ children’s wrist intimately and withstand the test of time.
When I was about to switch topics when talking to Ruth about her take on generational jewelry, my grandma quickly added, “and selfishly, I like to give my grandkids jewelry, because I know that, wherever they go and wherever I go, they will always think of me.” I love you, Mema.
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