Over the last decade, charm bracelets have cut what seems an unstoppable swathe through the jewellery industry. You cannot walk through a shopping centre without seeing entire shops dedicated to these beautiful, modular items. Or maybe you’ve had an idea of giving a charm bracelet as a gift to someone as a way to express your love for them for Valentine’s day? Overs the years, Charm bracelets have taken on a whole new energy within the jewellery industry, changing from their spiritual beginnings.

Charm bracelets have been around, in one form or another, for several thousand years. The earliest recorded examples were worn in ancient Persia and Babylon, though there is reason to suppose that the trend extends a great deal further back than that. These early charms were fashioned from locally available gems and were thought to confer spiritual power to the wearer.

Since then, the magical and religious significance of these charms has waned, and they are appreciated instead as items of fashion jewellery. The current boom in charm bracelets is merely the latest of a series. Queen Victoria is said to have helped fuel a resurgence of charm bracelets in England by wearing one containing tiny family portraits. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the bracelets became popular in the United States, after returning soldiers brought charm bracelets back from Europe as gifts for the women in their lives.

But to what exactly can we attribute their overwhelming popularity? In this article, we’ll take a look at what makes charm bracelets so appealing.

Charm Bracelets offer you choice

The first and most obvious strength of the charm bracelet is that they’re modular and modularity presents the customer with options. If you’d like a bracelet which is cheap and cheerful, then you can have one. If, on the other hand, you’d like one which is hugely ostentatious, you can. Charms vary in cost, depending on manufacturer. Some can cost as little as twenty pounds; others can cost several hundred. The choice is yours!

Charm Bracelets make reliable gifts

It may come as something of a surprise to many reading this, but there exist some people (predominantly men) who struggle with shopping for jewellery. To these poor souls, the rows and rows of glittering trinkets amassed beneath the glass of a jeweler’s counter look much the same, and choosing between them is an almost impossible task.

If you’re shopping for a gift for the owner of a charm bracelet, then this task is made all the more simple. For example, if you know someone who owns healing crystal labradorite jewelry like a charm bracelet, you can simply buy another charm for every birthday/occasion. This is advantageous both for the person buying the gift and the intended recipient. The former need no longer live with the shame of buying something ill-advised; the latter need no longer feign appreciation for dreadful gifts.

Charm Bracelets accumulate in value over time

What has more value: a single piece of expensive jewellery, or a dozen pieces of cheap jewellery? In many cases, it can be very difficult to wear the latter simultaneously while maintaining aesthetic coherence – or, to put it another way, you end up wearing a huge amount of jangling, mismatched jewellery and the result is an ugly, jarring mess.

And what happens then? You end up dispensing with some of your jewellery, relegating it to a dresser drawer where it the money you spent on it will be effectively wasted. Of course, you might ideally like to wear a single, precious item – but can’t justify the outlay that such items command.

Charm bracelets offer an alternative. You can spend a hundred or so pounds buying the ‘bare bones’, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be able to wear everything you might attach to it. What’s more, you can slowly expand your bracelet – and within a few years you’ll have a glittering, beautiful – and above all, coherent – bracelet.

Charm Bracelets offer uniqueness

Perhaps the best things about charm bracelets is that they can be tailored to the precise tastes of the wearer. The sheer quantity of charms available, combined with the effectively-infinite number of different combinations, means that no two charm bracelets need ever be alike. What’s more, some charms are crafted by hand – and no two items of handmade jewellery are ever entirely alike!

You can expand your bracelet with charms around a certain theme. If you’re into purple flowers, for example, then there’s nothing to stop you filling your bracelet with items both purple and floral. Moreover, if you feel like a change, then there’s nothing to stop you exchanging certain charms for others as your journey goes on. Perhaps purple flowers might be to your taste on Monday, while Tuesday feels more like a day for green butterfly day. With a charm bracelet, this dream can be a reality – and if you’d like, Wednesday can even be a day for both!