My meanings of jewelry

What is jewelry?
Jewelry is human emotion.
Jewelry is personal image.
Jewelry is creation.

Jewelry as adornment

Jewelry is human emotion. It’s how it makes you feel. Emotions are born from building a relationship with the customer, from understanding their colorways, their memories, their way of interpreting the world. This is why jewelry is particularly created for the purchaser to connect with it, all these keeping in mind that each separate individual will assign his own meaning to it, his own perception of what he sees.

Jewelry has the means to express ones’ creative individuality, together with sending a message, thus having the power of telling the world who you are. For example, if the balance of power and femininity is well captured and portrayed in a piece of jewelry, it immediately acquires the strength to reflect the power of a woman, yet retaining her femininity. Just like that, jewelry presents the finishing touch, and becomes the statement that she makes itself. Jewelry always says something about us, but also the person who is appreciating it. Similarly, when given as a gift, the jewelry sends a message straight to the receiver, along with just a little bit of your own self.

After all, jewelry is a story that we carry with us in the form of an adornment.

(Brooke Cagle, unsplash.com)

Jewelry as an investment/acquisition

In times in which the jewelry market meets a significant increase of men customers, the investment value of each piece becomes more and more important. Representing the majority buyer (about 70%) when it comes to gift-intended jewelry, men have a different perspective on the value of a jewel. They are mostly rational, analytical buyers, in contrast with women, who are predominantly shopping in the spur of the moment. Therefore, because “the language of jewelry is the language of the customer”, quality jewelry has to reflect in some way the value, in both personal and financial terms, of the product itself. This way, he offers you much more than just a simple jewelry, he offers you the status you deserve. Well, of course, also stating his own personal and financial status, but who ever said that would be a problem?

However, we women care for our own personal image. This is why we are instinctively drawn to exclusivity. Jewelry provides this exclusivity in a way similar to the way which tattoos did this in tribal societies. Luckily we have evolved into something much classier and less painful.

All in all, despite man being our favorite gift bearers, most of all jewelry is a gift to ourselves.

(Jutta Wilms, unsplash.com)

Jewelry as art

Women appeal to jewelry just as much as they appeal to art. This is because the jeweler is an artist himself. He takes inspiration from art, poetry, nature and everything around him and puts his interpretation into a sculpture which is the jewelry. When you take a piece of jewelry home you take a piece of the creators’ personality and individuality with you.

A piece of jewelry is the creators’ legacy and it encloses traits of his character, which are all influenced over time by everyday events and people, but most important his education, family, heritage and even the place he lives in. This is why many tourist customers look for the authentic experience of a specific city or country when buying jewelry.

Ultimately, it’s not the carats or the cost. Jewelry is emotion and what it brings to our lives, which is exactly the main purpose of art.

(Crowned quartz, antropologie.com)

Therefore, as I see it, in this industry which is changing at dizzying speed the factors that motivate people to desire, wear, collect and invest in jewelry are so diversified it has become virtually impossible for 2 persons to find a similar definition for jewelry. There are emotional factors, psychological factors, social, cultural and even commercial factors that all work to influence our own personal buying decisions.

Credit foto: Godisable Jacob