What five years of making jewellery taught me about women
Generic but true: sometimes we need to stop to see our beauty
Most of us in the beauty/adornment space talk about transformation – a makeover here, a Cinderella moment there. But I’ve started to think that’s the wrong story. In five years of designing and selling jewellery – watching women try pieces on, watching something change in their faces, shoulders lifting, eyes sparking – what I've witnessed isn't transformation but remembering.
I've been making jewellery for five years, mostly working with precious and semi-precious gemstones: pink opal, moonstone, emerald, aquamarine, as well as pearls. I started because I was burned out and needed to work with my hands. I was also drawn to the materials, forever mesmerised by the way something pulled from the earth could catch a sliver of afternoon light and make you gasp in awe. What I didn't expect was that I would learn a lot about myself and other women. About self-love, body image, and the elaborate, exhausting war most of us are fighting against our own reflection.
Here is what I know now that I didn't know then.
Women don't forget they're beautiful; they just get very, very busy.
The scroll rarely stops (five hours a day, anyone?). The comparison is constant while the standards shape-shift. One day you need to get thinner, smoother, plumper, younger; another time more chiselled, now somehow also strong and effortless. Add to it the never-ending list of chores and caring responsibilities, and a woman's idea of beauty gets buried under so much noise she doesn't see it anymore.
American poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “Beauty is not caused. It is.” She was right, and she wrote it long before Instagram. Beauty isn't manufactured; it doesn't need to be earned, maintained or achieved. It exists. But our comparison culture made it hard to achieve, and caused us to forget that we’re beautiful simply by being us.
That’s why a shimmery stone – like a fragrant flower or a beautiful sunrise – gives us a reason to pause. Two seconds of stopping is sometimes all it takes to fall back in love with your own reflection.
What women notice in the mirror once they’re wearing something beautiful isn't just the piece.
It can be the dreariest of mornings. The light is flat, the coffee is lukewarm, the kids are a nightmare. All in all, the mirror is not your friend. And then you put on your favourite emerald necklace. Or the pearl earrings your grandmother left you, or the ring you bought yourself the year everything changed. And there is, suddenly, a little more light.
This isn’t just poetic licence. It's neuroscience. Jewellery is tactile: cool metal and stones against skin. It is also intentional. You chose it, you paid for it, you fastened it, and you’re now wearing it.
Research shows that ritual activates neural pathways linked to reward, habit and emotional regulation. Even small, personal rituals can reduce cortisol and improve focus. The getting-dressed routine most of us rush through in the morning can become a powerful psychological reset – it basically signals to your brain: I’m in control.
Jewellery is the only category in fashion with no size.
No number on a tag. No waistband that pinches, no hem that judges the length of your legs, no dressing room fluorescent light making you feel bloated and sick. A necklace meets you exactly where you are. Sometimes, it makes your eyes pop (I hear that a lot when I wear aquamarine). Sometimes, it highlights your collarbone or your jawline (usually you didn’t even realise these parts of you have always been exquisite).
The jewellery’s democratic neutrality is truly freeing. Because in fashion, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all. But take a stone on a chain: it doesn't ask for your measurements. It adorns your body and makes you feel special.
The Cinderella story was never about the dress.
I collaborated once with a wedding dress designer. The dresses were extraordinary – layers of silk, tulle and lace, an epitome of craft. Women stepped out in them and were, objectively, transformed. Beautiful. But often, there was a disbelief in their eyes, as if they couldn’t quite occupy the big stage that just opened in front of them.
Then came the necklace.
The moment it draped around the neck, it was as if something ancient clicked into place. At the time, I filed it under ‘magic’. Later, I realised it’s psychology. The book Ashes to Beauty: The Real Cinderella Story points to something similar – that the Cinderella fairy tale isn't fundamentally about being rescued by a knight or a dress, but about a woman stripping down the layers and stepping into her power. Because the dress and the necklace don’t make her more beautiful – they just make her believe what was already true.
When a woman buys herself something beautiful, she’s making a promise.
And it’s not just jewellery – it’s flowers on a Tuesday, a candle that costs too much, a collectible shell to put on the dresser, or a new tarot deck. These are all declarations: I am worth the beautiful thing.
I remember a couple of women who found their way into my world through stones.
One was an academic and volunteer firefighter, a strong woman with wild hair. She bought her first aquamarine necklace and later requested a few more pieces. They worked beautifully with her frazzled mind and heart, she said.
Another was a businesswoman at the peak of her career. She tried a pink opal necklace and seemed almost startled. “I don’t want to take it off,” she said. “It makes me feel like dancing.” There was something almost mournful in the way she said it, as if she had momentarily encountered a version of herself she’d lost for good. Months later, she messaged me to say that since we met, she had slowed down, stopped living in constant boss-lady energy, met her partner and was now planning a trip around Australia in a van.
I don’t believe jewellery changes lives in some mystical, cinematic way. But I do think beauty can act as a permission slip. Sometimes a stone on a chain becomes a tiny interruption from the self-consciousness and the performance you have been giving for years. And in that interruption, something softer, more instinctive and more truthful has room to emerge.
That's why I'm still making things.
Not only to create more beauty in the world but to make women remember their own.
Salma Hayek said: "The most liberating thing about beauty is realising you are the beholder."
The problem was never that women have been too obsessed with how they look but more that we have outsourced the beholding entirely to other people, algorithms and a beauty industry whose entire business model depends on women feeling not quite there yet. Buying yourself the heavy Baroque pearl necklace – not waiting to be given it, not saving it for a special occasion, but putting it on top of a jumper on a cold winter day, it’s deciding that you are the occasion. I see it as a form of self-sovereignty.
I've watched that shift work on women in their twenties, in their seventies, in wedding dresses or fresh from the beach, picking up children from school or rushing back to work. The age and the outfit don't change the essential mechanics of the moment.
Suddenly, women stop trying to become prettier, younger, smaller, better. They breathe out the constant pressure and breathe in the self-love, self-adoration. That's how adornment works, and that's why I love it.
*Alex Reszelska is a writer, a Japanologist and a stone jewellery designer at Yasashi Studio