Charm bracelets are the jewellery equivalent of wearing your heart on your sleeve. You’ve chosen to express yourself via an array of jangling gems, each of which have been carefully selected to say something about your personality or identity – and the way you want other people to perceive you. If you grew up in the ’90s and Noughties, you might have dabbled in DIY and made them in your childhood or teens, or yearned after styles from the likes of Pandora or Links of London.
Blink, baby, because it feels like we’ve been transported right back there: Gen-Zs are unboxing Pandora charm bracelets on TikTok, friends are visiting “charm bars” as a hang-out activity and I’ve recently spotted lots of people (both IRL and online), with stacked charms on their arms, sprouting from their handbags and even decorating their footwear. From nostalgic Italian charm bracelets to delicate metal trinkets, it feels like charms are everywhere right now. Ian Charms founder and jewellery maker to the stars, Lisa Sahakian, has seen huge success with her nostalgic gems.
Lately, she admits she’s been “clinically addicted” to (Charli XCX’s fizzy, feral, party-girl album), and was inspired to create a new design, the ‘that brat Charli braxCxlet’, complete with dice, heart, alien, motorbike and spiky gel ball beads (remember those?), prompting sales to go “nuts”. “It’s probably been our best selling item ever, which reassures me that Ian Charms customers share interests .