Let me 'splain: I make jewelry, from polymer clay, beads, wire, and so forth. I sell at renaissance fairs and craft fairs for the most part. Most of my customers are women, as you might expect, but I have a higher percentage of male customers than I expected to have. Some of them buy stuff for a significant female (wife, girlfriend, mom, etc.) but I’ve had many guys admire my work and then request that I make more “guy-oriented” designs.
I COULD buy pewter or silver medallions/charms (or sharks’s teeth or somesuch)and hang them from a leather cord, but frankly, there’s a lot of that out there and I can’t see that the addition of one more person selling it would be useful in any way. I am assuming that guys would prefer simpler, bolder stuff, but I need some ideas.
Do you like leather cord jewelry, or prefer hemp? Or is it not jewelry to you unless it’s on a chain? How colorful can a thing be before it’s “girly”? Chokers, yea or nay? What about bracelets (or do they have to be called “wristbands” for guys?) Should I stick to the tried-and-true designs such as Celtic knots, zodiac signs and runes, or are there other designs you might be more drawn to?
I wouldn’t buy anything made from an animal product, so shells, teeth and leather cords are out. Beyond that I’ll buy (and possibly wear) whatever catches my fancy. I have chains and cord, beads and charms, silver, gold, brass, junk metal, amber, paste, even a few things that light up when they’re clasped. I’m not interested in Celtic knots because they’re cliché in my opinion, same goes for zodiac signs and runes (although I have a gorgeous bloodstone that’s naturally shaped as a kano that I had made into a simple pendant on a plain silver chain). For bracelets I tend to prefer very simple things if I wear them at all. No big straps and the like. I currently wear a thin gold bracelet that my parents got me from Italy a few years back but I’ve also worn larger chunkier stuff in silver and onyx.
Overall I’d be much more likely to buy a necklace with a unique absract design pendant with some substance to it than I would any of the so-called “traditionally” masculine things. If I’m going to wear jewelry it’s going to be to attract attention for being different and wearing the same stuff that a typical guy would wear rather defeats that purpose.
Oh, just an FYI, because it’s a valid point: I don’t use leather, but a waxed cotton cord that looks like leather. Because polymer clay is a very versatile medium, I am able to convincingly imitate a number of natural materials - including ivory, bone and tortoiseshell; I must make a note to myself to have signage that indicates it’s simulated. Thanks for bringing that up.
I need not runes, for I already have Uruz and Algiz upon my armor, and Hagalaz and Tiewaz upon my weapons.
On a more helpful and relevant note: I have several pieces that can hang from a chain. One is Bio-hazard symbol (now mostly retired… it was sort a high school ‘Look at me, I’m deadly!’ thing), another is one of these, and the last just some kind of cool looking symbol I found somewhere. Pointy, curvey, metal things are my style. When it comes to color, anything more than the pewter or silver the thing is made from is too much for me.
Personally, I’m partial to silver. Nonmetallic parts of jewelry can be pretty colorful–I like jewel-tones–as long as they’re not big, clunky things. Abstract designs with smooth curves appeal to me, and it seems to me that polymer clay would be well-suited to making some interesting ones.
Have you thought about doing stylized animals or animal heads? I suspect wolf’s-head or hawk silhouettes would be pretty popular with guys.
The only jewelry I wear is religious stuff that is simple and not too heavy or flashy. Most guys I know wouldn’t wear a bracelet or a choker if you paid them (Most guys I know are 25-45), but they would certainly wear a necklace with religious signficance. You can do a lot with crosses and simple icon type stuff. Hispanic people just love their saints.
I’m not a man, but both of my brothers are most likely to wear silver, usually simple designs. Middlebro bought two plain silver rings for himself and his then-girlfriend when he convinced her to officially be his girlfriend; they traded them for plain gold rings at the wedding. Because he works in construction, often he wears the old silver alliance instead of the upgraded version. Several leather cords, included one that’s a braid and one with several large, spaced beads. He also has what we call a “forget-me-not” bracelet in Spain: it’s a silver bracelet with a plaque that can be engraved. They’re called forget-me-not because usually you’d get them engraved with your own name inside and give them to someone as a keepsake.
Lilbro sometimes wears knotted leather cords. He was looking at some silver bracelets recently, borrowed some of mine to see how it felt to wear one. He liked one that’s very light: it’s two strands of silver, joining at the center around a round flat bead, and again at both sides of the clasp. There’s a long bead on each side of the clasp, between it and the point where the silver divides in two strands.
She pretty much just writes off guys. The only men she’s ever really sold stuff to were gay guys that bought some of her regular pieces, and other gay guys who looked at her designs and asked if she could work something into a cufflink or tie-tack.
She displays a couple of cufflinks, but I’m sure that sales to men are less than 1% of her business.
Early on, she always would get requests for things that never sell. At one show, she would get 100 people asking for cliip-on earrings, so she’d make a few pairs, and they would sit around for the next 8 months without a single request.
After a point, she was established enough to just say, “I’m making what I want. If someone wants to place an order, they can.”
The only jewelry I wear is rings. A thumb ring or one that goes on your ring finger are good, but no gems or bright colors. Silver and black are good; gold is not. As for bracelets, I’ve seen them more and more at stores, but I wouldn’t wear one because my wrists are pretty thin and it looks awkward. A choker though? That I’ve never seen on a guy. Ugh, just the thought of something being that close to my throat makes me feel like I’m being strangled.
I do that last bit, too - I used to sell some of my stuff wholesale and I got real tired real quick of buyers who’d say “I like this, but I want 50 of them in blue, not green.” Not to be snotty, but I’m not a factory, I’m an artist, so what you see is what you get. I do take some commissions, but beyond that I make what I want.
About the rest, my problem here is that I DO get a lot of male customers. I had one piece in particular that guys seemed to be crazy about, and damned if I could figure out why - it was a rectangular pendant with falling leaves scattered on the surface, hung on a thin gold-colored cord. I made ten of them and sold seven, all to men - one guy told me that he wished he had a girl to give it to, but since he didn’t, he was going to hang it from his rearview mirror; another guy asked me to knot the cord to make it choker length and help him clasp it on. I thought the design was pretty feminine, but apparently I was wrong, since women seemed completely uninterested in the piece!
As I said, I sell at Renaissance faires, so it’s likely my average male customer is not a typical male customer… you don’t often see guys in chainmail or furs or kilts in the mall - so I’m just trying to get a general idea of what kinds of designs guys who do wear jewelry might wear outside the realm of costuming.
The only thing I wear is an inexpensive cross. It’s silver-colored with white plastic inlays, and hangs from a blue cord. The silver coating has mostly worn off (it was really cheap) exposing a bronze-looking base metal. Ironically, this actually looks pretty nice itself, maybe nicer than the original silver look.
I also have a more expensive gold cross which I don’t normally wear. Partly this is due to fear of losng it, but also because the chain is too short for my liking. One of these days I’ll buy a longer, heavier chain for it.
Other than those, I dunno – I have my high school ring around somewhere, but I haven’t worn that in a long time.
I wear pretty much all silver, usually 4 rings and a bracelet. I tend to like fairly basic designs as I have pretty small hands. I don’t even buy mens watches because they tend to be so big they take over my whole wrist.
