I am 53 and I had quietly stopped buying jewellery. It was not because I stopped liking it.

Six things one layered necklace gets right for a woman our age, written down by a customer, not a jeweller.

I worked it out standing in a shopping centre last winter. I had walked the length of the jewellery counter twice and there was nothing on it for me, and it was not a matter of taste. It was that everything there had been made for one of two people, and I am neither of them.

At one end: tiny thin chains, butterflies, hearts the size of a grain of rice, initials. Made for a twenty-two-year-old and priced for one. At the other end: pearls, a brooch, something with a clip earring. Made for my mother, who was eighty-nine when she died. Between those two there was nothing at all. And I have been walking past that counter for about a decade without ever once naming what was wrong with it.

So I stopped buying. Not out of protest, just quietly, the way you stop doing anything that has stopped rewarding you.

This is the first thing I noticed and it is the thing nobody talks about. The tree pendant is about the size of a five cent piece. That sounds unremarkable until you compare it with what is actually being sold to women my age, which is pendants the size of a grain of rice on a chain you can barely see. A small pendant on a fifty-three-year-old chest disappears. This one does not. It reads across a table, which is where you are usually sitting when somebody notices what you are wearing.

"Finally something you can actually see. I am so tired of squinting at tiny charms."

There is a whole language on that jewellery counter and none of it is written for us. Butterflies, stars, tiny lightning bolts, hearts with arrows. It is all charming and it is all for somebody who has not lived very long yet. A tree with its roots showing is a different kind of statement entirely, and it is one I am comfortable making now in a way I would not have been at twenty-five. It does not need explaining to anybody. It also does not read as somebody trying to look younger, which is the trap I have been avoiding for years.

"It is the first thing I have bought in years that does not feel like fancy dress."

I will say the thing nobody says. The skin on my neck at fifty-three is not the skin I had at thirty-three, and a single thin chain sitting flat against it does no favours at all — it draws a line right across the part you were not thinking about until you saw the photograph. Three chains at three different depths break that up. They give the eye somewhere else to go. I did not buy it for that reason and I did not expect it, but it is true and I would want to be told.

"Nobody says this out loud. Three layers sit far better on an older neck than one."

Half the year in Melbourne I am in knitwear, and most necklaces vanish into wool or sit awkwardly on top of it. The lengths on this one solve that by accident — the bottom chain drops far enough to sit clear of a crew neckline instead of getting swallowed by it, and the top chain sits above the collar rather than half in and half out. I have worn it over jumpers, over a linen shirt, and over a plain white top, and I have not yet found the thing it argues with.

"Works over a jumper, which is more than I can say for anything else I own."

Proper lobster clasps with a spring you can actually work, not the tiny spring rings that need two hands, good light and somebody else. My fingers are not as quick as they were and I have quietly stopped wearing two or three things because of it, which is a small indignity nobody warns you about. I can do these up behind my neck without looking and without help. That sounds like a minor detail. It is the difference between a necklace being worn and a necklace being in a drawer.

"I can do it up myself. Half of what I own I gave up on for that reason."

At this price I assumed I knew how the story ended. A warm week in February, a grey-green mark on my neck, into the bin. It is gold-plated steel rather than plated brass, and the difference is that steel does not corrode underneath the plating the way brass does. Mine has been on since late summer, through a hot Melbourne March, and the colour has not shifted and my skin has not marked. I do take it off to shower, which the instructions ask you to and which I would have done anyway.

"No green mark, no fading. I have owned $200 chains that could not manage that."

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One honest note before the price

This is not fine jewellery and I would not want you to expect it to be. It is gold-plated steel, not solid gold, and it is not something you hand down. Take it off before the shower and before the pool and it will keep its colour. If what you want is an heirloom, this is not it. If what you want is something made for a woman our age that you will actually wear, it is.

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The jewellery counter, against what a woman our age actually needs

I walked that counter twice and bought nothing. Here is why, laid out plainly.

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About the price

I will be straightforward, because the price is what made me suspicious in the first place. It is $49.95, down from $99.95. I expected it to look cheap the moment it came out of the packet, and it did not — the pendants have some weight to them and the chains are properly finished rather than crimped.

Cute Home say the sale pricing is about selling direct with no middleman taking a cut. That is their arithmetic, not mine. Mine is simpler: I stopped buying jewellery for about ten years because none of it was made for me. This one was worth breaking the drought for.

If you have been walking past that counter for years the way I was, this is the one I would put on you myself.

— Nancy

About the writer. Nancy Brooks lives in Melbourne, VIC. She writes occasionally about the small things she has actually kept using. She is not affiliated with Cute Home beyond being a customer.

This page is an advertisement for Cute Home. Nancy's letter is shared with her permission. Cute Home · An Australian start-up from Melbourne · Free Australia-wide delivery · 30-day money back guarantee.