The Pearl Studs That Go With Everything

I was sixty years old the first time I owned a pair of pearl earrings. Not because I had anything against them. Because I assumed pearls were for other women. Women with a certain haircut. Women who did not flinch at a jewelry counter. Then in the first week of April, seven months ago now, I typed PAVOI into the search bar on my phone, ordered a pair of pearl studs, and found out I had been wrong about who pearls are for.

Here is the problem I was trying to solve. Back in February I bought a pair of small gold hoops and I have worn them nearly every day since. They are my everyday earring and they are staying. But on Sunday morning, and at Thursday lunch with Donna, and on any day that involved a nicer blouse, the hoops looked exactly like what they were. Everyday. I wanted one pair that made it look like I had made an effort.

Donna wears faux pearl studs to lunch. I have never owned faux pearls and I am not going to tell you hers look bad, because they do not. But I had been looking at them across a table for two years, and I had been looking at the real ones in a department store case, and I decided I wanted the real thing if the real thing could be had without a long conversation with Walt about the budget.

So I read. The PAVOI pair was freshwater cultured pearls, 5.5 millimeters, button shaped, on 14K gold plated posts with push backs. Two pearls. Better than fifty-five hundred reviews and four and a half stars. The price came in about what lunch with Donna costs, which is the entire reason I was willing to find out whether I liked pearls at all.

They arrived in a small box, and I put them on that Wednesday morning for my church office shift, which was not the dressiest test I could have run. By Sunday I had my answer. A friend at church stopped me in the hallway and asked where I got them. Not whether they were real. Where. That is a different question, and honestly a better one.

A friend at church asked where I got them. Not whether they were real. Where. That is a better question.

Now the honest part, because you did not come here for a commercial. These earrings are small. Five and a half millimeters is not a statement earring, and if you are picturing something the size of a chickpea, size your expectations down before you order. They are also not a perfectly matched pair, because they are real pearls and real pearls do not come out identical. Nobody across a table will ever see that. I saw it once, holding them side by side in the bathroom light, and then I stopped doing that.

The gold is plating, not solid gold, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Seven months in, mine look the way they looked in April, but I am careful with them in a way I would not have to be with real gold. Jewelry goes on last in this house, after the lotion and the hairspray and the perfume. Nothing of mine gets worn into the shower, to bed, or out to the garden. That rule is the reason the plating has held.

Cleaning is a soft dry cloth after I take them off. Twice now I have used a second cloth barely damp with plain water, dried the pearls on a towel, and let them sit out an hour before they went back in the pouch. Pearls do not want to be soaked and they do not want a dip. Mine live in their own small soft pouch inside the lined tray in my top dresser drawer, and that is the only place they ever live.

I do not wear the PAVOI pearls with the hoops. One or the other, never both. Hoops Tuesday through Saturday, pearls on Sunday, at Thursday lunch, and for anything dressy. That sounds fussy written down. It is not fussy in practice. It takes four seconds and it means the pair I wear on the good days still looks like the good pair.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you nobody is going to mistake these for the pearls in the case at the department store, and that has not cost me one thing in seven months. I would tell you to check the size before you order, because 5.5 millimeters is smaller than the picture in your head. I would tell you not to buy them for a wedding and expect them to be the earrings in the photographs. Buy them for Sunday, for lunch, for the days you want to look like you tried. And I would tell you this: if your ears have ever gone red and itchy from cheap earrings, plated posts may still not agree with you. Mine have been fine. That is my experience, not a promise, and a real reaction is a question for a doctor.