This month I had the privilege of being invited to present a workshop entitled “Your Jewelry Personality” for the Premier Designs jewelers in our area. Perhaps some of you recall my trepidation when it comes to jewelry. Since my exposure to Premier, I have had a change of heart.
- I can wear their earrings! I think the posts are titanium or something, but these are the first EVER affordable earrings I have found that don’t cause my ears to break out in a matter of hours.
- More importantly, I saw a dramatic demonstration of the difference between wearing jewelry and not wearing it. I never again want to compromise my image by going without!
What I spoke on was how different personalities wear different jewelry. Peer pressure to wear things that don’t suit me has been a major contributor to my reluctance when it comes to wearing jewelry: alot of stuff, especially matched sets, feels overdone on me AND I really intensely dislike insignificant earrings. Can’t wear studs at all.
Here is what I shared with the ladies about combining pieces, based on the first two dimensions (letters) of one’s Myers Briggs type. A quick inventory and explanation of Myers Briggs typology can be found at Personality Pathways.
- IN (Winter): bold earrings or necklace – not both
- EN (Spring): random-looking combinations
- IS (Summer): understated earrings with long, elegant necklace
- ES (Autumn): matching sets
Clearly this is just a suggestion, but since I’ve been playing with the ideas and talking about them to various groups of ladies, I’ve been surprised how well they fit.
Now, for the dramatic demonstration, you could try this at home: sometime when you are wearing a great outfit WITH great jewelry, have someone take a picture of you. Then, take off the jewelry and take another picture. Hopefully this exercise will re-create for you the visual that inspired me to get serious about jewelry. Then let me know if the personality styles help at all. 🙂
I generally think jewelry is a MUST! Especially earrings! I never go anywhere without some kind of earrings. I haven’t decided how I feel about the personality style as I freely wear all the styles, but maybe that’s because I adore jewelry! The one thing I pretty much never do is wear a bold necklace and bold earrings at the same time – it completely overwhelms my frame.
Hmm, I’m definitely an autumn in coloring, not a spring, but an EN in personality, not an ES. I would go with the random combinations although I guess I do have a few matched sets if they are funky enough.
I always have trouble reasoning out other people’s preferences (is that an IN trait?) but your suggestion is right on for me. A bold and definite statement – but not several bold and definite statements at once.
Being able to go bigger with the earrings is relatively new. I’ve always had a funny thing about earrings – I absolutely cannot go without them. If I forget to put them on in the morning, it drives me nuts all day, so I have emergency spares stashed everywhere and have put my day on hold to go find new ones on more than one occasion. But for all that obsession, I’ve never been the person who was really into them as a statement. For years, my go-to style was moderately styled and sized hoops. I started feeling more open to larger and smaller styles about the time I turned thirty- I guess at that point started feeling enough personal gravitas to not be inappropriately “youthed” (that’s the opposite of “aged”) by more flamboyant styles, and also to feel comfortable pulling off, say, a pair of diamond studs alone as a casual look.
I’m glad you’re coming to personally satisfying terms with accessories – not because I think they’re intrinsically necessary, but because I imagine its preferable to being vexed by them.
I’m just learning about jewelry too — but have yet to have really great jewelry or really great outfits, and don’t understand well what looks great together, versus just mediocre. But I’m an autumn/winter and an IN. So that seems like a match. I like to wear either bold earrings or a bold necklace (but have very few of either), and I’ve been interested in trying matched sets, but haven’t yet made any (and wonder if they’d feel too matchy-matchy). But how do you do a Bold necklace, with earrings, (or bold earrings, and a necklace) and have them not look mismatched if they don’t match? I have a lot to learn.
Oh, how I wish all of you were here and we could talk more; your comments are so much fun!
Amy – I noticed one of the professional jewelers the other night was wearing a conglomeration of necklaces (read “bold necklace”) with tiny stud earrings that matched one of the metals or stones in one of the necklaces. I laugh because, before she taught her workshop or got up in front of the group, she changed the tiny earrings out for something more intense. It was, after all, a jeweler training! lol. (But she looked better in the first combo, undoubtedly suited her better; when I saw her at the first training, she was wearing bolder earrings and no necklace at all – her wide-open neckline creating the drama.)
My suggestion for you would be to decide on a metal, or metals, and have a pair of simple studs, small hoops, or similar AND a simple chain or pendant, or the equivalent simple necklace, to wear with your bolder earrings or necklace. Hope that helps!
Brilliant — I love the suggestion! Thanks so much. I’ve become addicted to making earrings (I have to start posting the earrings I’ve been making) and want to make necklaces too – especially a bold necklace – it’s just intimidating me.
ESTJ seemed right. I like the concept of matching sets, IF bold. I want my jewelry to lie there and
not move. I hate necklaces smacking me when I walk. I hate jewelry (on me) I can’t see from across a room. I sometimes like dangling earring that have a flat shield type effect but lately I have been wanting more earrings like the vintage pair I have that is silver and enamal floral and climbs back up the ear. 🙂 I do, though, often like to wear no jewelry where some is expected. I kind of resent having to wear it. I did notice, years ago, that when I was doing a lot of community work with the school district that my credibility soared when I wore earrings and cut my hair short.
This irked me. I had to go through a perfunctory interview to apply as a candidate for a position and had to listen to how I had “grown” in office. All I could think was that it was pure hokum and they were reacting to a ten dollar haircut and a pair of bold earrings. Does your research show that men evaluate a woman with jewelry/earrings differently? I suppose there’s the whole Gold = Success paradigm.
BTW, is this just jewelry you’re working with or can you extrapolate out to a clothing style/preference? I just re-did the questionnaire on the Growing More Beautiful website and I noticed that I had developed a strong preference for the idea of radiating out vs drawing in.
This is not spelled out in her questions but it’s what occurred to me. I’m happier in my more
vivid clothing and have been purging items that are more washed out, wishy washy.
At the same time, I don’t care to have people scrutinize my clothing. How I solve this is to stick to straighforward design so that someone totally uninterested in fashion could sum it up in one or two words: jacket, skirt, big flowers. No AllSaints type sweaters with one long and one short side so it has to button diagonally and leave people wondering about it/you. And I’ve been choosing a lot of royal/cobalt blue – not the neon versions. I figure it’s bold but most people will just think “blue” and move along. Now if I could only figure out a no upkeep hairstyle.
http://expressingyourtruth.blogspot.com/search/label/MBTI
I’ve written several posts about my struggles to correlate MBTI and DYT.