The first piece of jewelry you never forget

I still remember the very first piece of jewelry I ever received. I was a teenager, and my mother gave me a simple, thin 18-carat gold ring. At the time, I didn't understand why she was so insistent: "You'll see, you'll never forget this piece of jewelry."

She was right. That ring was more than just an accessory. It was a symbol of my first step toward adulthood. Every time I wore it, I felt different, a little taller, a little more confident.

It's often like this with our first pieces of jewelry. They aren't necessarily extravagant, but they leave a deep mark on our memory. We remember who gave it to us, the occasion, the emotion. And even if one day we no longer wear it, it remains etched in our history.

A customer told me the same thing. She came to buy a necklace for her fifteen-year-old daughter. "I want her to have her first real piece of jewelry, not a fancy one that breaks after three months. Something she can keep, like I still have the ring my mother gave me."

Together we chose a delicate gold chain with a small heart-shaped pendant. The next day, she came back with her daughter, beaming. The young girl kept touching her necklace, as if to make sure it was really there. Her mother whispered in my ear, "She slept with it on, she doesn't want to take it off anymore."

Another day, a young man came into the workshop. He wanted to give his little sister a ring for her 18th birthday. "Not an engagement ring, not an adult ring... just a piece of jewelry that will say: welcome to a new stage of your life." He left with a fine ring, adorned with a small, discreet stone. A few weeks later, he wrote to me to say that his sister was crying with joy when she saw it.

These stories are repeated often. And they remind me that 18-karat gold is not chosen by chance. It lasts, it resists, it retains its shine. Because a first piece of jewelry must be able to survive the test of time. We wear it, we put it back, sometimes we forget it in a box... then we rediscover it years later, intact, ready to revive all the memories.

I, too, sometimes pull out my teenage ring. When I put it on, I see my shy smile in the mirror, my mother's proud gaze, and that strange feeling of entering a new chapter in my life.

That's the magic of a first piece of jewelry. It's not the object itself, but the memory it captures, the emotion it preciously preserves to return to us, intact, years later.