At 62, I stopped wearing bracelets because I could not do them up on my own
At 62, I stopped wearing bracelets because I could not do them up on my own
Six things the Harriet gets right, from a woman who ended up buying two and is not the least bit sorry.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
I have a small drawer in the bedroom with four bracelets in it and I have not worn any of them for about six years. They are perfectly nice. Two were presents. The reason they are in the drawer is not that I went off them. It is that every one of them fastens with a tiny little lobster clasp, and somewhere around my middle fifties my hands stopped being able to do that on their own.
You know the manoeuvre. You pin one end down with your thumb, you bring the other end round, and then you need a third hand that you do not have. I used to get my husband to do it. Then I started only wearing them on days he was in. Then I stopped taking them out of the drawer at all.
Nobody announces that. You just quietly become a woman who does not wear bracelets.
How it happens
It is never a decision. It is a small daily humiliation that you solve by avoiding it, and avoiding it works so well that after a while you forget there was ever anything to avoid.
And it spreads further than you would think. It is not only bracelets. It is the necklace with the fiddly catch, the earrings with the tiny butterfly backs that end up on the carpet, the top with the little covered buttons. Each one quietly moves from the wardrobe to the back of the wardrobe to the charity bag, and not one of them was ever about taste.
If somebody asked me outright I would have said I am just not a jewellery person. Which is a tidy sentence that covers up something much more annoying, which is that I am a jewellery person with uncooperative fingers.
What I had wrong
I had assumed this was a thing about me that I would have to work around for good, and that the answer, if there was one, was something medical or something expensive.
It was never that I could not wear bracelets. It was that I could not fasten them. Nobody had ever sold me one that did not need fastening.
The Harriet does not have a clasp at all. Half of it is a solid curve of polished steel and the other half is two tan leather cords, and the back of it is simply open. You push it over your wrist and it stays where it is. There is nothing to line up, nothing to pinch, nothing to drop on the floor behind the dressing table.
It came from Nottingham Boutique, a little shop that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It was twenty two pounds ninety nine.
The day they came. I had ordered two, which I will explain.
THERE IS NOTHING TO DO UP
This is the entire reason I am writing. The steel part is a C shape with a gap at the back, so it goes on in one movement with one hand and then it is on. I timed myself being silly about it one morning and it is under two seconds. Compare that with standing in front of the mirror at ten to nine with a lobster clasp between your teeth. I know which of those I will still be doing at seventy.
The back of it. That gap is the whole invention.
My hands are not what they were and I have not been able to fasten a bracelet in years. This one I can put on myself. That is not a small thing.
Margaret W., BunnyWHICH IS WHY I ENDED UP WITH TWO
Here is the bit I did not see coming. Once there is nothing to fasten, a second one costs you nothing. No extra fiddling, no second catch to line up, you just push it on after the first and that is that. I ordered the heart one and then went back a day later for the daisy, and now I wear them together far more often than I wear either on its own. They are the same shape, so they sit against each other rather than clattering about, and the two charms sitting side by side look deliberate rather than like you could not decide.
Both of them on. This is how they live now.
Bought one, wore it for a fortnight, went back for two more. They stack beautifully and the discount made the second and third almost silly not to.
Jean H., KinoultonTWO CHARMS, AND THEY ARE NOT THE SAME DAY
The heart is the quiet one. It is small and solid and it lies flat on the leather rather than dangling, so it reads as sentimental only if you already know that it is. The daisy is the one I put on when I am going somewhere and want to look like I have thought about it. Worn together they are better than either, which is an annoying thing to discover after you have only bought one.
Their spot on the chest of drawers, on the rare evening they are both off.
I have the heart for every day and the daisy for going out. Honestly I end up wearing both most of the time.
Pat R., OwthorpeTHE STEEL HAS NOT DULLED
It is stainless steel, which is a dull sentence for quite a useful fact. It does not tarnish, it does not flake, and it does not leave that green line round your wrist that cheap plated things leave by about the third wear. Mine has been on through washing up, gardening gloves and a fortnight of rain and it is still as bright as the day it came. The leather has gone a slightly deeper tan, which I like better than when it was new.
Close up. The little pierced bead is prettier than it needs to be.
No tarnish, no green wrist. I react to most costume jewellery and this one has been fine.
Sheila M., HicklingONE SIZE, AND IT GENUINELY FITS
I am always suspicious of one size. On this it works, because the open cuff has a bit of give and the leather cords take up the rest, so it settles where your wrist actually is instead of where a sizing chart thinks it should be. I have a fairly slim wrist and my sister has not, and it sits properly on both of us. There is nothing to measure and nothing to send back for being a half inch out.
Going on. One hand, no help, no swearing.
I have a large wrist and expected it to pinch. It does not. It just sits there and I forget it is on.
Dorothy K., Upper BroughtonTWO LOOKS LIKE A PRESENT. ONE LOOKS LIKE AN AFTERTHOUGHT.
I bought the second pair at Christmas for my sister and I am going to be honest about why I sent her two rather than one. One bracelet in a box is a perfectly kind thing and it looks like you remembered on the way home. Two, in the same box, with different charms, looks like you chose. It cost me a few pounds more and it changed the whole thing. She wears them together, which I did not expect and am quietly pleased about.
Sent two to my daughter for her birthday and she said it was the nicest thought she had had all year. It is really not an expensive present.
Marjorie B., WilloughbyThese two, against the four in my drawer
The four in the drawer are not bad bracelets. That is what makes the comparison worth doing.
Every one fastens with a tiny lobster clasp
Needs a second pair of hands, or a very good day
Two of them have gone dull round the catch
Worn on special occasions, which means almost never
Six years in a drawer and still perfectly nice
No clasp at all. An open cuff you push on
One hand, under two seconds, every morning
Stainless steel, no tarnish and no green wrist
On most days, including the dull ones
Both on at once more often than either alone
About the price
One is £22.99. It was £31.99.
Two is £45.98, and because there is a discount that starts at two, ten per cent comes off in the basket on its own. There is no code to remember and nothing to type in. It lands at a little over forty pounds for the pair. If you go to three it is fifteen per cent and at four it is twenty, and you can mix any designs across the collection rather than having to take four of the same.
I am telling you that plainly because it is the reason I have two, and because I would rather you knew than found out afterwards and felt daft, which is what happened to me.
What made me trust it before any of that was the steel. Cheap bracelets go wrong in the same place every time, which is wherever the metal meets the skin, and this one has not. I went and read the reviews afterwards, which is the wrong way round, I know. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some sites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, "I bought it because I cannot fasten anything any more. I did not expect to like it this much." That is more or less my experience, put better.
Sitting down with a cup of tea. I do not take it off now.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you were sat here I would ask you to go and look in whatever drawer you keep that sort of thing in, and count how many of them you have stopped wearing for a reason that has nothing to do with whether you like them.
Because I think there is a whole category of things we quietly give up on in our fifties and sixties and then file under not really me. Not the clothes that do not suit us. The ones that need fingers that work the way they did at forty. Nobody designs around that and nobody mentions it, so you assume it is only you, and you put the nice things in a drawer and say you are not a jewellery person.
I was never not a jewellery person. I just could not work the clasps, and I was too proud to say so.
If any of that is familiar, this is a very cheap way to test it. And if you are going to order one, order two. I did it the slow way and had to pay the postage twice.
Caroline
HARRIET Heart & FLORENCE Daisy Leather Cuff Bracelets
- Open steel cuff with no clasp, so it goes on one-handed in seconds
- Polished stainless steel that does not tarnish, flake or mark your wrist
- Two soft tan leather cords with a pierced silver-tone slider bead
- A small solid charm that lies flat rather than dangling
- One size, with enough give to sit properly on most wrists
- 10% off two, 15% off three, 20% off four, applied in the basket
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
Mix any designs across the collection and the discount still applies.