i was very excited to see a ruby dixie vintage charm holder in the june issue of cosmopolitan! my oldest friend ( and brilliant lecturer in feminist studies...and amazing writer!) jen maher, who i have known since we were about 8 or 9 maybe, said that she wanted me to "bring back the charm holder" so, i'm on a mission. we're on our way!
when jen and i were in elementary school, pretty much EVERY girl had one. there were the girls at school who came from the slightly wealthier end of the spectrum that had genuine 14ct gold charm holders, loaded with more real gold charms than a custodians keychain, hanging from an "s"(serpentine) chain which was the "only" chain to have darling... and then... there was us.
we were the girls who longed for gloria vanderbilt designer jeans in the entire array of pastel colours, deeply desired velour cap-sleeve shirts and lusted after the cherokee platforms that all the popular girls had. but the most coveted item was the charm holder. unfortunately, we never had real gold ones. each of us possessed some cheap knock-off version, purchased at one of the cheapest department stores in LA ever like "gemco" or the "treasury". they inevitably turned our necks green.
jen and i were in the 2nd most popular group at school. we didn't have quite what it took i guess to launch us into the popular group, so we were just loosely affiliated with them...we sort of dipped in and out. so when we were on the playground at lunch time and the popular girls, with their perfectly feathered hair, were all admiring the newest myriad of charms they had added to their charm holders, jen and i would be accosted by one of them so they could check out our charm holders. we'd sheepishly let them look at them with their piddly offerings of a few non-gold, probably even sport-related charms and wince a bit as they examined them, casting their eyes over every millimeter, determined to find a "14k" mark. then quickly release the necklace as though their hands had just been stuck in a vat of acid when they didn't find one.
so maybe it was subconsciously a secret fantasy of mine to one day own loads of charm holders. i don't know. i do know as soon as i found them a few years ago, i bought up as many as i could possibly buy. thankfully at this stage, the fact they aren't "14k" is totally by the by.
jen and i look back at those days now and laugh. they kind of stung then. but i'm so glad we were the girls with the fakes. our motto is "ALWAYS the monet...never the 14k"....
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| a keepsake of the heart forever |
Maybe its just me, or a Scottish thing, but I have never heard of 'charm holders'? Charm bracelets were quite popular here but not so much with the kids. I remember my cousin (10 years my senior) telling me her Sterling Silver charm bracelet was worth £140, quite a lot in 1970's cash. I also remember my favorite charm was a dustbin where the lid lifted up to reveal a cat inside lol. I would be interested to know if this fashion period passed me by or if it was purely an American thing.
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from what i can make out talking to various people, it must have been an american thing. they weren't a fad over here. they had a year or two of being really popular, at least in los angeles, and then sort of disappeared. most of the charms people had were a "floating heart", "#1", "live love laugh", and even at our age, i think someone had a "rich bitch" charm!
ReplyDeletewow your cousin was living the life. £140 was like a house down payment in the 70's! ok... well... maybe the 50's!
thank you for reading and commenting on my blog btw! i really appreciate it. i usually mean to respond, but if i'm not using my safari browser ( which runs slow and is a nightmare so i usually don't) i can't comment in firefox. A-nnoying! x
That's ok, I like to know that there are other people reading my blog, apart from family members who are practically obliged to read it lol. So I assume other blogger's are the same.
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