I have owned one string of pearls for forty years and it has never been further than a funeral. This is the first time I have written a letter about pearls
I have owned one string of pearls for forty years and it has never been further than a funeral. This is the first time I have written a letter about pearls.
Six things a pearl necklace and a pair of pearl earrings get right that forty years of keeping the good pearls in the top drawer got wrong, written down by a customer, not a shop.
Dianne Prescott · Customer · Epping, Sydney · 5 min read
I am 64, and for most of my married life I have owned exactly one string of pearls. It lives in a box in the top drawer of my dressing table, and it comes out for weddings and funerals and not much in between. This spring, at a kitchen tea in a homestead garden out at Camden, I sat across from a woman who wore her pearls like they were nothing special, and a month later here I am, writing a letter about a necklace.
Hers was the Eleanor, a strand of round pearls with a little gold toggle at the front and a single pearl drop hanging from it. Mine is the Eleanor too, and I went back for a pair of the Valeria earrings as well. They are from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly making lovely things for women our age for a few years now. I ordered the necklace the week after the kitchen tea, fully expecting to send it back. I did not, and I wrote to the boutique to tell them why, and they asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read. So here it is, the six things these get right.
Pearls, if you have looked lately, come in two piles. The first pile is the good string in the box, which is too precious to wear to the shops and too fiddly to do up on your own. The second pile is the cheap and cheerful kind from the chemist’s spinner, which looks exactly like what it is from across a room.
Pearls you save for a funeral, or pearls you would not be seen in. I stopped accepting that a woman has to choose, and the Eleanor is the proof I was right to.
Mine, under the same wisteria a few weeks later. Graham took it and cut my head off, which he says was on purpose.
The clasp is at the front, where you can see it
This is the thing I noticed first, and it is the thing I would tell you if I only had a minute. The Eleanor fastens with a little gold-tone toggle at the front: a small ring and a short bar that slips through it. No fiddling behind your neck with your arms up and your reading glasses on, no calling Graham in from the garage to do you up. Dawn, the groom’s grandmother at the kitchen tea, told me that is half the reason she wears hers to the shops. I put mine on in the hallway mirror in about four seconds.
Where it lives now. In a dish on the chest of drawers, not in a box in the drawer.
“My fingers are not what they were and I had given up on necklaces with a clasp at the back. This one I can do myself.”
Margaret H., PictonOne pearl drop, right where a neckline needs something
From the toggle hangs a single larger pearl drop, and it sits just below the hollow of your throat. That is the bit Dawn’s pearls had that mine never did. A plain strand can look a bit like you are off to a board meeting. The drop gives it a little life, and it fills that gap at the neckline of a round-neck top or a sleeveless dress without anything else to think about.
“The little pearl drop is what makes it. I have worn it with a navy top three Sundays running.”
Gwen T., The OaksThe earrings come with it
The Eleanor is a set. In the box with the necklace come a pair of matching earrings, each a little gold-tone hoop with a single pearl drop that echoes the one on the necklace. I have spent forty years trying to find earrings that go with my good pearls, and here they simply arrived in the same parcel. The listing calls it a matching two piece set, and that is exactly what it is.
The afternoon they arrived. The necklace, its earrings, and the Valeria pair I could not resist.
“I bought it for my daughter’s wedding and it was lovely to have the earrings already matching. No last minute hunting.”
Christine B., MenangleIt looks right with a T-shirt as well as a good frock
The boutique says the Eleanor is perfect for weddings and special days, and it is. But what Dawn showed me is that it looks just as right on an ordinary Tuesday. I have worn mine with a white T-shirt to morning tea with Jenny, with a striped top to the Thursday school pickup, and with my sage dress to Lyn’s birthday lunch down at her villa in Mittagong. Graham says I have now worn pearls to Bunnings twice and he is not sure what has happened to me.
Morning tea on the verandah. Nobody else was dressed up, and it did not matter one bit.
“I thought it would be too dressy for every day. I have hardly taken it off since it came.”
Kay P., CobbittyThe Valeria: two pearls, one earring
These were the surprise. Each Valeria earring has a small round pearl on the front of the lobe, and a larger pearl that sits just underneath, held on a thin silver-tone arm behind the ear. From the front it looks like two pearls floating, one above the other. On the days I want something quieter I take the back pearl off and wear the little front one on its own, which the listing says you can do, and I do. They are what I reach for when the necklace is too much.
The Valeria, with my hair tucked back for once. Jenny noticed them before she noticed my haircut.
“Modern without being silly. I wear the little front pearl on its own for golf and both for dinner.”
Leonie D., ThirlmereThere is a pearl piece for every woman you know
The two I chose are only the start. The boutique’s pearl collection runs to well over a hundred pieces, studs and drops and hoops, single strands and long ropes, bracelets and rings, and I spent a whole evening on the sofa choosing while Graham watched the cricket. Lyn, Graham’s sister, is getting a pair of the Valeria for Christmas, and Jenny has already asked me for the link for her granddaughter’s wedding day.
Putting them in before the school run. Four pearls, one hand, no fuss.
“I bought one set for myself and two more as presents. Every one of them was a hit.”
Pam R., NarellanThe Eleanor and the Valeria, against the pearls in the top drawer
You can buy pearls almost anywhere. I know, because I have owned a few strings, and given the rest to the op shop. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A fiddly clasp at the back of your neck
A plain strand that looks like a board meeting
Earrings that never quite match
Saved for weddings and funerals
Nobody has ever asked where you got them
A gold-tone toggle at the front you can do yourself
A single pearl drop right at the neckline
Matching drop earrings in the same set
Worn with a T-shirt on an ordinary Tuesday
Asked about at a kitchen tea in Camden
About the price
I will be straightforward about the price, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. The Eleanor set, necklace and earrings together, is $39.95, and it was $80.00. The Valeria earrings are $39.95 too, and they were $80.00. Half price, every piece.
The boutique says the spring sale price is about making room for the summer stock, selling directly, with no middleman taking a cut, and that at this price they are barely making anything on them. That is their arithmetic, not mine. What I can tell you is that I have paid more than that to have the clasp on my old pearls mended, and I have worn the Eleanor more in a month than the old ones in ten years.
If your pearls are in a box in the top drawer waiting for the next funeral, this is the necklace I would hand you instead.
Dianne
The Eleanor & Valeria Pearl Pieces
- ✓Eleanor: pearl strand, gold-tone front toggle and pearl drop
- ✓Matching pearl drop earrings in the same set
- ✓Valeria: small front pearl, larger pearl below the lobe
- ✓Wear the Valeria front pearl on its own for a quieter look
- ✓Over a hundred pearl pieces in the collection
- ✓Free delivery across Australia
Spring sale on now. The popular pieces are already going.