I have a lovely pale cream pashmina, I love the look and the feel of the silk. I also keep it in my travel gear in case I find myself needing a really light wrap because it turned cool, or in case I need to cover my head.
At least a pashmina is useful, a jangly bracelet is not.
My thought has always been that charm bracelets are transitional, for women that are (finally) getting rid of their stuffed animals. I’d say this bracelet was for a low-level offender, maybe one or two animals from childhood with a lot of personal history, early 30s. Someone with a freaking menagerie would want something with big, noisy, colorful charms, before completing the final transition to cat lady.
Oh, and now they have the jelly bean diamonds. There are real, deeply colored, diamonds that go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, these are not they.
They are artificially colored using heat and lasers, like the blue topaz craze from a few years ago. They are made from inferior diamonds of, originally, poor color and clarity. The ones with multiple inclusions are called “strawberry” because the inclusions look like seeds. Some have the cracks and inclusions filled with resin, like that used for small windshield cracks.
I was a bit skeeved out by it as well when I saw the commercial. Glad I’m not the only one. Those charms are hideous. Pandora bracelets aren’t the least bit pretty either. Just goes to show how people will buy anything if it’s marketed well.
All the female administration staff in my office building are into Pandora stuff. Yes, it’s hideous. But I keep my opinion secret. You don’t mess with the people who process your paychecks!
Are those really that ugly, or are they just poorly photographed?
This seems to be a widespread reaction.
Oh gawd I hate those Jane Seymour things!!,
Great description by the way:p
YES! We’ve called those butt/ass necklaces ever since the very first commercial! Who buys that crap?
Not exactly. The term “pashmina” originally described cashmere made from the wool of Pashmina goats. You are not going to find a scarf made of this material for $6. However, use of the term “pashmina” isn’t regulated in the US so any scarf that contains wool – or even a scarf that doesn’t contain wool – could be marketed as a “pashmina”. You can get these for cheap because they’re made of cheap material.
My wife has a Pandora bracelet**.
I think she got it to appease some of her older relatives who refuse to get her a gift card for her birthday/xmas. She only wears it to family functions and a quick “Oh, you could get her an inexpensive charm for her bracelet.” is an easy way to deal with them.
**I’ve never gotten her a charm for it - could be why we are still married 
So that’s what it is. I was at the mall today and noticed a jewelry store called Pandora and thought “that’s an awkward name!”. I love handmade artisanal jewelry, specially because it is cheap (10 dollars for a bracelet is my limit). I don’t own any real jewelry, and don’t wear wedding rings. I have told my husband that the quickest way to get rid of me is to spend money on jewelry or flowers, I will divorce his stupid ass stat.
Yeah, and that Jane Seymour thing always looked like an ass to me. Gah, people buy anything, is like they don’t work hard for their money.
I’ve never seen Pandora jewelry before. “Ugly” is putting it mildly.
Some of the necklaces and the earrings are pretty, but the charm bracelets are pretty tacky looking.
I’m a big fan of 1928 myself.
The charm bracelets seems to be a conversational piece at my office. Someone catches a glimpse of another’s bracelet and says, “Oh, we’ve got the same charm!” Then that person launches into a long-ass story about where they got it (usually involving a fight with some salesperson). Then someone else talks about the charm they want. Then the lady overhearing the conversation from the far-off cubical can exclaim how she already got that one. Ya’ll wanna see it? Then someone can talk about the knock-off they saw at Stein Mart.
It gives women of a certain age an excuse to giggle like schoolgirls when there are no new pictures of cute grandbabies to squeal over. While the rest of us women vow to never become like them.
My fiancee loves Pandora, she designed and bought one specifically for our upcoming wedding. She has a few others that she wears on a regular basis and I think they look great on her. Different squids for different kids I guess.
A lot of my friends have joined the Pandora craze, I don’t like the jewellery much at all. I suppose there are plenty of people who like it as it’s so popular, but I wouldn’t want to wear it - luckily my family knows me well enough to stay clear of that kind of thing.
My friend’s sister prefers Troll Beads but I think they’re every bit as ugly as Pandora. Still, it makes her happy and it relieves the need to think of a gift idea every xmas, birthday etc.
I will say that I did once buy a bead (custom made) for my niece’s bracelet and I was happy to do so. She was still in 8th grade and had just been accepted to the high school basketball team. So I had a bead made with her jersey number on one side and her nickname on the other and the background color was one of her school colors. So, for something like that’s it is pretty cool and the custom made bead was hugely less expensive than either the Pandora or the Chamilia beads.
I went into a Jared about two years ago to have a link removed from a necklace and was walking around while the repair was being done. I was startled to see that about a third of the store had been devoted to these beads. I guess the economy was so bad that nobody was buying actual jewelry? People could still go to a jewelry store and feel they’d bought jewelry.
I’ve always heard them called the “tits-n-ass” collection.
Someone MUST be buying them because a new commercial pops up every Xmas and Valentine’s Day.
This is probably correct, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many people are hard to buy for, but if you know that someone collects cow-shaped creamers, then you can be looking for a new one all year long. And the charms are supposed to have some meaning to the recipient. But I checked the website yesterday. Each charm was about forty bucks, for something that’s about half an inch in diameter. Manufacturing cost is probably less than a tenth of that. And you can’t just buy them anywhere but are forced to go to their stores.
My brother buys a new Hallmark ornament for their tree every year, and that’s basically the same idea.
And as for this commercial, I felt the creepiness the first time I saw the commercial. And not based on the “buttness”, but that the guy was buying girl the same necklace as her mother. What’s next? Matching mother-daughter wedding rings?