Few women can buy a different necklace for each garment they are likely to wear. A well chosen necklace should be attractive whether worn close to a high-neck dress or above an off-shoulder gown. It should be tried on with both types of dress before being bought.
A good jeweler will not only permit but encourage such a practice. He will lend his counsel out of his wide experience. He will probably be more interested in making a woman happy than in making a sale. (Even from the point of view of his own financial advantage, this is a wise, long-range view. And no woman should go to a jeweler whose interest in her will not be long-range.) In addition to a good jeweler, there should be another male more nearly concerned, whose opinion is valued. But the woman herself has to face the world with her jewels. They are her adjuncts and intimate accessories to beauty. In the final choice she must remember that the necklace, most prominent of her jewels, must capture her own personality and tastefully proclaim her character.
CHAPTER 7
The Ring
While the necklace is the most conspicuous jewel in a woman’s parure, and the earclip does more than any other to make subtle alterations in her appearance, the finger ring is beyond compare the most popular of all jewels. There seems little to be said about the purchase of a ring except that one should select a beautiful jewel, and yet there are many ways in which the ring can not only contribute to the overall effect of the personality but actually beautify the hand.
The Giving of a Ring
In the first place, the manifold aspects of its symbolism—to be discussed more fully later—bar this jewel from any casual giving. A brooch, a clip, earclips, or a bracelet: all these might be sent as a gift to any person, without further thought; but a ring is bought for and given to a relative, or someone closer still—or someone to whom one wishes to be close. And the recipient of a ring should be aware of the implications involved in its acceptance. If a ring is proffered as a gift before there is an understanding that admits of such a present, the intended recipient will find a gracious way of declining such an “elaborate” or “too magnificent” or “over-generous” gift.