Typically, the best kinds of luxury jewellery gifts will be some combination of beautiful, meaningful and trendy, although it takes a particularly unique set of circumstances for it to be all three.
Over the years, jewellery trends can change and vary dramatically, particularly given the way that jewellery is so often used to make a statement that is both personal and connects to society at large, you can see some very strange styles become exceptionally popular trends.
With that in mind, here are some of the strangest luxury jewellery trends throughout the years.
Mood Rings
Initially launching in 1975 and extending into a wide range of different styles, mood rings were gigantic statement rings with a central liquid crystal “stone” that allegedly changed colours depending on your mood, although in practice it was based on temperature.
A huge part of 1970s fashion, mood rings often go in and out of style, typically riding the wave of 1970s nostalgia and unorthodox statement styles.
Mourning Lockets
The Victorian Age was arguably one of the first ages of fashion as we recognise today, with early fashion magazines, the rise of department stores and the influence of fashion trendsetters, arguably the most important of which in that era was Queen Victoria herself.
There are two eras of Victorian jewellery fashion; the flower and insect-obsessed styles in the early and mid-19th century, and the mourning era from 1861 until 1901, after her husband Prince Albert died.
She would wear a locket with pictures of the two together and with a lock of his hair, which created a trend of other people wearing similar gold and precious stone-studded lockets commemorating the dead.
Puka Shells
The 1990s were filled with luxury takes on natural and homemade jewellery styles, and nowhere was this more evident than with the puka shell, inspired by the types of nostalgic mementoes people would make or take from trips to the beach.
Modern examples replace the string with gold chains and often would plate the shell itself in gold to make it fit into a wider range of styles.
Eye Jewellery
Thankfully a rather shortlived trend that is not at all for the faint of heart, eye jewellery is not an eyebrow piercing but literally a tiny platinum piece that is implanted into the conjunctiva or clear layer of skin that protects our eyes from damage caused by a bit of metal.
It is probably a piece of good fortune that the trend of literally sticking bits of jewellery into our eyes did not catch on in the 2010s because unless it made a comeback in 2077 when the concept of body modification takes on a whole new meaning, it would probably lead to an epidemic of blindness.
The Eye Miniature
A rather specific form of locket-type memento, a lot of late 18th and early 19th-century jewellery focused on a lot of eye imagery, all of which traces back to one somewhat infamous tryst.
King George IV, during the time he was Prince of Wales, fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow which made their love forbidden as per the royal laws of the era.
Regardless, he sent a love letter to her complete with a piece of jewellery that contained a portrait of her eyes and created a trend of eye-inspired pendants and brooches.