Marie Bracelet

This bracelet has spent the entire summer in water with me and I stopped thinking about it weeks ago. Between our neighborhood pool, a long weekend on Lake Travis, and daily showers, it has been soaked more days than not since April. Stone bracelets are usually the worst for this because water sits behind each setting and turns the backs cloudy and gray. I held it up to the window last night and every emerald cut is still clear front and back with no residue trapped underneath. The gold around each stone is just as bright as the day it arrived. I have owned two tennis bracelets before this and neither made it past one summer.

I bought this in February for a wedding and then simply never took it off. Since then it has been through daily hand washing at a hospital job, hand sanitizer roughly forty times per shift, and every shower in between. Alcohol gel is what stripped the plating off my last bracelet within about three weeks, so I was fully prepared for the same. Five months later the gold is unchanged and the stones are still glass clear. I compared it against the matching pair my sister bought at the same time and keeps in a box for special occasions. Hers is not brighter than mine, which is the entire reason I am bothering to write this.

I have wanted a tennis bracelet for years and every one I tried left an angry red band around my wrist within a few hours. My allergist confirmed nickel years ago and told me to stick with steel or titanium, which does not leave many pretty options. This one is stainless underneath and it has been on my wrist essentially every day since early spring. No rash, no itching, and no red line even after sweaty gardening afternoons where it sat against damp skin for hours. I have also showered and swum in it with no reaction afterward, which is usually when the trouble starts for me. It is the first sparkly bracelet I have owned that my skin simply ignores.

A full week of Atlantic swimming in June with this on my wrist. Salt water did absolutely nothing to the finish or the stones. I rinsed it once when I got home and it was perfect.

The sparkle against two plain gold chains makes the whole wrist look deliberate. I rotate which chains but this always stays. It is the anchor of the stack.

The stones and the gold setting are every bit as pretty as the photos and it draws compliments. I do need the extender fully out for a comfortable drape, so worth knowing if you have a larger wrist.