There is No Right or Wrong. There's only you.

Margalo necklaces

Someone decided at some point that jewellery had rules.

Certain metals for certain ages. Certain stones for certain occasions. Pearls for weddings and diamonds for engagements and gold for when you've earned it and silver for when you haven't quite yet. Guidelines handed down through generations of women who were told what was appropriate and passed it on because nobody ever stopped to ask why.

We are still living with those rules. Most of us have absorbed them so completely we mistake them for our own opinions.

We don't need them. We never did.

The woman who always looks like herself

You know her. She might be the woman at the next table whose earrings you can't stop looking at, the unexpected combination you wouldn't have thought of but that works completely. She might be your mother or your oldest friend or the colleague who walks in every morning looking like she knows something the rest of the room doesn't.

She doesn't follow rules. She follows instinct.

She has worked out, through years of paying attention to herself rather than to what she's supposed to do, what makes her feel like herself. Some days that's one perfect piece worn with quiet confidence. Some days it's something bolder that makes the woman at the next table look twice.

Both are right. Neither requires permission.

But if you need someone to say it out loud, here it is.

Wear what makes you happy. Today. Not when you've lost the weight or found the occasion or worked out whether it's appropriate. Today, as you are, in the life you're actually living.

That is the only rule worth keeping.

On being too much

There is a particular kind of comment that women of a certain age will recognise immediately.

Isn't that a bit much?

Said by someone who means well. Said by someone who has their own relationship with staying within the lines and feels mildly unsettled when someone else doesn't. Said with a smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes.

Here is what too much actually means. Too much for whom?

Bold colour combinations that make you catch your breath are not too much. Four rings on one hand because that's how you felt this morning are not too much. A statement piece on a Tuesday with nowhere particular to go is not too much.

Too much is an opinion dressed up as a fact. It belongs to the person saying it, not to you.

Wear the earrings. Stack the rings. Put on the pearl on a Wednesday because you feel like a pearl on a Wednesday.

On being too little

The opposite exists too and is equally worth naming.

The woman who has decided somewhere along the way that she is not the kind of person who wears jewellery. That it's not for her. That she wouldn't know how. That she'd get it wrong somehow.

There is no getting it wrong.

A single fine chain worn every day without thinking about it is not less than a considered stack. Understated is not the same as uninterested. Quiet is not the same as absent.

Some days the most powerful thing you can wear is one small piece chosen with complete intention. The woman who wears one perfect thing and means it is not playing it safe. She is playing it exactly right. For her. On that day.

What Porini is actually for

I make jewellery for the woman who has decided to stop waiting for the right moment and start wearing what she loves in the life she already has.

For the woman who wants to be bold and needs someone to back her. For the woman who has always been understated and is quietly curious about what one extra piece might do. For the woman who knows exactly what she wants and just needs someone with forty years of craft and a studio in the New Zealand hills to make it for her.

I don't make jewellery for occasions. I make it for every day. Solid precious metals that survive being lived in. Designs with enough character to be interesting and enough simplicity to reach for without thinking.

There is no right or wrong here. There is no too much or too little. There is no waiting for the moment to be special enough.

There is just you. And what makes you happy when you look in the mirror before you walk out the door.

Start there. Everything else follows.

There are no rules here. Just pieces made with intention for women who wear what makes them happy. Find yours.

https://www.porinidesign.com/collections