At 62, I have started liking things that show their age
At 62, I have started liking things that show their age
Six things the Feathered copper cuff gets right that a bracelet kept upstairs for best gets wrong, from a woman who is not a jewellery writer.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have never once sat down to write about jewellery. My mother had a copper pan that hung by her cooker for thirty years. It went browner and softer-looking the more she used it, and as a girl I thought it was the most beautiful thing in that kitchen. Somewhere in the middle of my own life I stopped thinking that way. I started replacing anything that looked worn and keeping the good things upstairs for best. So this is not a review. It is a woman who changed her mind about what wearing something out actually means, saying so.
The bracelet is called the Feathered, from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It is a copper cuff with one long feather worked along the front of it, open at the back so it slips on. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
A plain copper bangle. No stones, no clasp, nothing clever. Read on.
Here is the habit I had got into, and I do not think I am alone in it. The good things live upstairs. The nice necklace is for a wedding, the good scarf is for going somewhere, and the everyday version of you makes do with whatever will not matter if it gets marked. Then the occasions get further apart, and one day you realise the good things have been upstairs for four years and you have been making do all that time.
I had spent years keeping things nice by not using them, which is a strange way to own anything.
The Feathered is the first thing I have bought in years that is meant to be used, and having worn it every single day since it arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The morning it came. Heavier in the hand than I expected, in a good way.
It is one feather, and nothing else
There is a single long feather worked into the copper along the front, with a raised line down the middle and fine angled marks cut either side of it, and a small feather tip at the other end. No stones, no charms, no shine for the sake of it. It is quiet enough to wear with anything and interesting enough that people pick up your wrist to look at it, which is a balance I have rarely managed.
The feather up close. All those little lines are cut into the metal itself.
Much prettier in real life than in the photographs. The feather is properly detailed and it does not look cheap at all.
Hazel M., BeestonIt slips on, and there is nothing to fasten
The cuff is open at the back, so it goes on over the side of your wrist and settles where you put it. That means no standing at the mirror with something tiny between your fingers, and no asking anybody for help. I can put it on in the dark, and I often do, because it is the first thing I reach for.
So easy to put on by myself, which matters more than I expected. It stays put all day and does not slide about.
Marjorie T., SouthwellIt is solid copper, and you can feel it
It has a proper weight to it when you pick it up, the sort that tells you it is metal all the way through rather than something plated over the top. The listing says it is 99.9 per cent copper and it feels it. For the money, that surprised me more than anything else about it.
Feels solid and well made, not flimsy like some I have bought. Nice weight on the wrist without being heavy.
Denise A., KimberleyIt changes as you wear it
This is the part I did not expect to care about. Copper warms against you and the colour deepens where it sits, so after a few weeks it stops looking box-fresh and starts looking like yours. Mine is a shade darker along the inside of my wrist than it was in August. Everything else at our age is sold to us as a way of hiding the years. This is the first thing I have owned that quietly does the opposite, and I like it better for it.
A quiet five minutes by the window. I turn it round without noticing I am doing it.
I have worn it every day for a month and it has gone the loveliest warm colour. It looks like it has always been mine.
Sylvia R., Radcliffe on TrentIt sits happily next to a wedding ring
Copper is warm rather than bright, so it does not argue with a gold wedding band the way silver sometimes does, and it does not look like I am suddenly trying. It goes with a cardigan and jeans, and it goes with the good coat, and I have not once had to think about whether it works with what I am wearing.
Goes with my wedding ring and everything else I own. I wear it every day now, with anything.
Brenda C., Burton JoyceIt is the first thing I have not saved for best
It lives on my wrist, not in a box on the dressing table. I do the washing up in it, I garden in it, I have worn it to a funeral and to the tip in the same week. Because it is meant to be used, nothing about using it feels like a risk, and that has turned out to be worth more to me than anything else I own that is kept safe upstairs.
The dish it almost never sits in, next to the reading glasses that do.
I put it on the day it arrived and have not taken it off since, apart from to clean it. It has become part of getting dressed.
Jean P., ArnoldThis, against the bracelet you keep upstairs for best
Most of us have one. Something nice in a box, brought down twice a year. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Lives in a box, worn twice a year
Too good to risk on an ordinary day
Looks the same as the day you got it
Something to fasten, usually fiddly
You forget you even own it
Lives on your wrist, worn every day
Solid copper, meant to be used
Deepens in colour the more you wear it
Open cuff, nothing to fasten
The first thing you reach for
About the price
The Feathered cuff is £23.95 at the moment. It was £48.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that with the autumn sale on, small things like this go quickly once people see them. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and weeks of wearing it every day, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered a second one for my sister. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women 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.
One put by for my sister's birthday. She is harder to buy for than she thinks.
If your good things are upstairs in a box and the everyday version of you is making do, I would start here. Not because a bracelet changes anything. It does not. But there is something in wearing a thing until it looks like yours, rather than keeping it nice for an occasion that never quite comes, that I wish I had worked out a good deal earlier than 62.
Caroline
Feathered Copper Bracelet
- One long feather worked along the copper
- Solid copper, 99.9 per cent, with real weight
- Open cuff, slips on, nothing to fasten
- Warm copper that deepens where you wear it
- Sits easily beside a wedding ring
- One size
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now. Small things like this go quickly.