Sorry, We Lied. Here Are Five Complaints We Keep Getting.
We called it a statement piece in our own advert. It isn't one. Here is what women actually write to us about the Harriet and Florence leather cuff bracelets — in their words, not ours.
The Quick Take
- It doesn't look expensive, because it isn't. £22.99, and that turns out to be the point.
- Women tell us they forget they have it on. We had meant that as a feature.
- It goes with everything, which apparently makes it less special.
- Daughters keep borrowing them and not giving them back.
- The people who said one was plenty tend to come back for the second within a fortnight.
The Harriet Heart and the Florence Daisy Leather Cuff Bracelets are £22.99 each. We wrote the advert for them ourselves, and we overdid it.
Somewhere in the first week we described them as a statement piece. That was a lie — a small, ordinary advertising lie, the sort everyone writes without really thinking about it. These are not statement pieces. Nobody is going to stop you in the street over one. We only worked out how wrong we had it when the messages started arriving, because nearly every one of them read, on the face of it, like a complaint. Here are the five we keep getting.
“It doesn't look expensive.”
Correct. It isn't. It is £22.99 and it is stainless steel on a leather cord, not a stone in a claw setting. Not once has anybody written to tell us that the expensive bracelet is the one she reaches for on a wet Tuesday to take the bins out.
The jewellery women actually wear every day is almost never the jewellery they would insure. That was the whole idea behind this one, and then we went and wrote an advert calling it a statement piece, which is the exact opposite of what we made.
“I forget I'm wearing it.”
Sent to us as a worry. She thought it had come off somewhere. It hadn't.
There is no clasp on these. The steel part is an open half-cuff that slips over the wrist and stays where you put it, and the two leather cords sit flat rather than rattling about. It weighs very little, nothing on it catches a cardigan sleeve, and the cuff stops it spinning round the way a bangle has usually done by lunchtime. So yes — you will forget it. We were apparently hoping for something louder.
“It goes with everything — so it isn't really special, is it?”
This is the one we think about most. She meant it as a mark against the bracelet, and she is not wrong about the facts. Tan leather and polished steel do not clash with anything, so there is no outfit it is the wrong bracelet for.
But that is also why it is the one on the wrist, and not one of the three in the dish on the landing that are waiting for an occasion. Special, in jewellery, nearly always turns out to mean conditional. We would rather make the one that doesn't need the right day.
“My daughter borrowed it and hasn't given it back.”
We get a version of this most weeks and we have stopped apologising for it.
One size, no clasp and nothing to adjust means it fits a thirty-one-year-old wrist exactly as well as a sixty-three-year-old one, and a small heart or a little daisy doesn't read as anybody's age. The usual ending is that the daughter keeps it and the mother orders another. We would rather tell you that now than let you find out at the weekend.
“I said one was plenty and now I have two.”
Most people who buy a second one do it within a fortnight, and they almost never buy the same charm twice. It is the Harriet heart for the days that mean something and the Florence daisy for a plain jumper on a Tuesday, or the other way round.
Worn together on the same wrist they look deliberate, which is the one time these bracelets genuinely do look like a decision. Two is also where the price comes down — the second one is 10% off in the cart, nothing to type in. We did not design them as a pair. Our customers did that.
So What Are We Actually Claiming?
Only what the complaints already say. It is light enough to forget about, plain enough to go with everything, easy enough to put on one-handed that your daughter will help herself to it, and £22.99, which is not a sum you have to justify to anybody.
It will not catch the light across a room and it is not going in a safe. If that was what you were after, this is the wrong bracelet, and we would rather you knew that before it arrived than after.
— Evely Rose Boutique
One last honest note, on stock. These went up at the end of September in small runs, while we worked out which designs women actually wanted to wear. A few found their people and most didn't, so we are clearing a large part of the collection and most of those designs will not be restocked. Harriet and Florence are two of the ones still standing. There are twenty-eight designs on the page today; there will be fewer than that by Christmas.
