At 62, my hair went silver and everything gold I own suddenly looked wrong
At 62, my hair went silver and everything gold I own suddenly looked wrong
Six things the Sedona set gets right, from a woman who knows nothing whatsoever about jewellery.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
I let my hair go. That is the polite way of saying it. What actually happened is that I got tired of sitting in a chair every five weeks while a lovely girl painted my roots, and one January I simply stopped going, and by the following autumn I had the hair I was always going to have. Silver, with a bit of pewter at the front.
I liked it. I still like it. Nobody warned me about the rest of it though.
Because a month or so after it had all grown through, I put on the gold chain my husband bought me for our twenty fifth, the one I had worn more or less constantly for years, and I looked in the mirror and something was off. Not dreadful. Off. Like a cushion carried into the wrong room. I took it off, put it back in the box, and told myself I was being ridiculous.
I was not being ridiculous. I just did not have the words for it yet.
How it happens
You do not throw your jewellery away. That is the thing. It stays upstairs in the same box it has always been in, and every so often you lift the lid and have a look and close it again, and you go out wearing nothing at all.
And wearing nothing at all does something to a plain top that you do not notice until you see a photograph of yourself. There is a gap at the front where something used to be. My daughter in law took one of me at a christening last spring. Navy dress, hair done, perfectly nice. I looked at it and thought, she looks like she is on her way somewhere rather than like she is actually at the thing.
So you stop bothering. Not as a decision. You just stop.
What I had wrong
I thought the problem was me. Sixty two, no idea what suits me any more, probably past the age for anything that is not a plain pair of studs. That is the story I had been telling myself, and it is a very easy one to believe, because believing it lets you off ever doing anything about it.
It was not that I had got too old for jewellery. It was that I had gone silver and was still shopping for gold.
A woman at my sister's said it to me in passing, without meaning anything by it at all. She said, you want silver now, with that hair. Then she went off to get herself another sausage roll, and I stood in the kitchen feeling as though somebody had turned a light on.
I went and looked that same evening. I was not after anything grand. I wanted one thing I could put on without thinking about it, in a silver tone that was not trying to be shiny, with a bit of colour in it somewhere so that it did something for my face and not only for my neckline. The Sedona came up, from Nottingham Boutique, a little shop that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and it had the earrings with it, and it was thirty two pounds ninety five, which I will come back to, because I did not believe that either.
It came in a proper little box with tissue in it, which I was not expecting at the price.
THE SILVER IS THE SORT THAT SITS WITH GREY HAIR
The beads are not shiny. That is the whole thing, and I could not have told you it mattered until I saw it on. They are a soft matte silver-tone, darkened a little in the hollows between them, so they have a weight about them rather than a glint. Against silver hair that reads as deliberate, as though you chose it. Bright polished metal next to grey hair just looks like two different kinds of shine having an argument.
The centre stone close up. You can see the veining running across it.
I have been grey since I was fifty four and every single thing I owned was yellow gold. This is the first necklace in years that has not fought with my hair.
Maureen T., Burton JoyceTHE TURQUOISE DOES WHAT A SCARF USED TO DO
I used to put a scarf on for exactly one reason, which was to get a bit of colour up near my face, and then I would be too warm all afternoon and spend the whole time pushing it off my shoulders. The turquoise-coloured stones do the same job and they weigh nothing at all. There is a run of them spaced along the strand and then one large oval one at the centre front, and that bit of blue sitting at the collarbone lifts the whole of you. It earns its keep now the mornings have gone dark and everything I own has gone back to navy and charcoal.
Wore it with a plain black jumper to a funeral tea and three people told me I looked well. It was not me that looked well, it was the blue.
Jean A., CalvertonTHE EARRINGS COME WITH IT, SO THERE IS NOTHING TO MATCH
This sounds like a small thing. It is not a small thing. Half the reason my jewellery stayed in that box is that I would find a necklace I liked and then stand there for ten minutes holding earrings up against it like a woman doing a puzzle, and then give up and go out with bare ears. The Sedona arrives as a pair. A silver-tone bead with a turquoise-coloured one hanging underneath it, on a plain hook. They go with the necklace because they came with the necklace. The decision has already been made for you.
The earrings. Short enough that they are not swinging about all day.
I am hopeless at putting things together. Having it arrive already matching took the whole job away from me.
Pauline R., RuddingtonIT SITS WHERE I WANT IT, NOT WHERE IT LANDS
Forty five centimetres, with a five centimetre extender chain on the back of it. What that means in practice is that it will sit up at the base of the throat or drop down onto the collarbone, and you choose which, depending on what you have got on. Under a shirt collar I let it out. With a V-neck I take it in, so the oval stone sits right in the V. Every necklace I have ever owned before this one sat wherever it fancied sitting and I simply put up with it.
The extender sounds like nothing until you have a short neck like mine. I wear it on the longest setting and it finally sits right.
Hazel W., BinghamTHE BEADS HAVE A SIZE TO THEM
They are graduated, small at the back of the neck and growing bigger as they come round to the front. It is an old way of stringing a necklace and it works. The practical upshot is that the thing reads. From across a table, in a photograph, in the hall mirror on your way out of the door. So much jewellery made for women our age is apologetic, little whispering things that vanish into a jumper. This does not vanish into anything.
It goes with the plain things, which is most of what I own.
Bigger than I expected from the photographs, and I mean that as a compliment. You can actually see it.
Doreen K., KeyworthIT MADE A PRESENT I DID NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT
I bought a second one in August for my sister's birthday, which is the first time in my life I have bought the same thing twice. She is the one who had the opinion about my hair in the first place, which I thought was rather funny. It arrives as a set in its box, so there is nothing to wrap badly and nothing to explain on the day. She wears hers with a white shirt most days of the week now.
Mine lives out on the dressing table now, where I can see it.
Bought it for my daughter and ended up ordering one for myself the same week. It is a very easy present.
Marjorie P., LowdhamThe Sedona, against the gold chain in my box
I am not getting rid of the gold chain. It was a present and it meant something. But here is the honest comparison, because I think a lot of women are carrying exactly this problem around and have never once said it out loud.
A twenty fifth anniversary present, and loved for years
Bright yellow gold, next to silver grey hair
Nothing in the box matches anything else in the box
Sits wherever the chain decides to sit
Worn perhaps twice since my hair grew through
Thirty two pounds ninety five, bought by me, for me
Soft matte silver-tone, which is what grey hair wants
Arrives with its own earrings, so nothing needs matching
Forty five centimetres, with a five centimetre extender
On most days, with most things
About the price
It is £32.95. It was £66.00.
I will be honest with you, when I saw that I assumed something must be wrong with it. Thirty odd pounds for a necklace and a pair of earrings together sounded like the sort of thing that turns up looking nothing like the photograph. I ordered it half expecting to send it straight back, which is the only reason I happened to notice they do thirty day returns.
It came in a little box with tissue in it. The weight of it in the hand was the first surprise. The second was that the large oval stone has proper veining running across it, those dark lines you can see in the photograph further up, so it does not have the flat painted look I was braced for.
I went and read the reviews afterwards, which is entirely 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 have had more comments on this than on anything else I own, and most of them from strangers." That would have decided it for me, had I read it first.
With a denim shirt, which is what I have on most Saturdays.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you were sat here with a cup of tea I would not give you a speech about jewellery, because I genuinely do not know the first thing about jewellery. I would tell you the one bit that took me three years to work out, which is that nothing went wrong with you.
Something changed, and nobody mentions it, so you assume the fault must be yours and you quietly stop. Your hair changed colour. That is all that happened. The things that suited you at forty are sitting upstairs in a box being perfectly lovely and perfectly wrong, and the whole business only wants somebody to tell you to go and look at silver instead.
I had not got too old to wear anything nice. I was just still shopping for a woman with brown hair.
If that is anywhere near where you are, start with one thing you can put straight on and not think about again. This is the one I started with.
Caroline
SEDONA | Turquoise Necklace & Earring Set
- A beaded necklace and matching drop earrings, together as a set
- Matte silver-tone beads, graduated small at the back to large at the front
- Turquoise-coloured stones along the strand, and one large oval stone at the centre
- 45 cm with a 5 cm extender chain, so it sits where you want it
- Lobster clasp on the necklace, hook fittings on the earrings
- Arrives as a set, which makes it a very easy present
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price.