The Rise Of The Friendship Bracelet

Kate Youde on the rise of friends celebrating their love for each other – with friendship bracelets

The Taylor Swift Effect: Inside The Friendship Charm Craze

When Cece Fein Hughes posted on Instagram about a bespoke signet ring she hade for a client to give to their best friend, she didn’t expect it to attract quite so much attention. ‘People were fascinated,’ says the founder of Cece Jewellery. ‘The Taylor Swift effect is real.’  

The gold ring, commissioned for the singer by the model Gigi Hadid, features a hand-painted enamel likeness of Taylor’s cat Benjamin Button, her favourite number (13) and her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s American football jersey number (87). The inside of the band is engraved ‘TTPD’ for her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. 

While this piece garnered global headlines, it’s not unusual for Cece to make personal pieces to celebrate friendship. She designed matching butterfly rings for two friends before one of them got married. And jewellers are reporting a rise in jewellery gifting as a way of showing appreciation for our mates. ‘Fine jewellery has taken on so much, especially since Covid,’ says Cece. ‘Gifts are becoming more sentimental, more thoughtful, moving away from that fast-fashion aspect of shopping. I think that’s really played a part. What are you going to give to your friend on a really special birthday? It’s going to be bespoke and something that people are happy to wait for.’

Sheherazade Goldsmith launched Loquet in 2013. She says that at the time women tended to wait for a partner or family member to buy them jewellery. ‘In the last ten years there’s been a massive shift in that viewpoint, where lots of women are going out and buying jewellery for themselves,’ she says. ‘And as they’ve got more comfortable in doing that, then we’ve seen a lot more women buying jewellery for each other.’ 

Loquet sells gold and crystal lockets, which hold charms representing someone’s story. ‘One of the greatest loves that you can have are friendships,’ says Sheherazade. ‘There’s an understanding about two people who’ve been with each other throughout different stages of their lives, where they intricately know every detail about them, so being able to give someone a locket that says “I see you” is a lovely thing.’ 

The brand introduced gold and gem-set tequila, cosmopolitan cocktail and champagne charms aimed at the friendship market this summer. Sheherazade says they are reminders of your ‘silliest nights’. A friendship gift set, including a locket containing a cosmopolitan, a palm tree and a ‘BF’ script charm, sold out within a couple of weeks of its initial launch. ‘Often a group of friends will come together and purchase a locket for somebody and then each of them will add something that relates to their friendship with that person,’ says Sheherazade. 

The gold ‘BF’ charm is designed to represent a loved one, be that your best friend or even a four-legged one. Requests for Jessica de Lotz’s personalised wax seal charms featuring a paw print of man’s best friend have overtaken those for children’s handprints. The jeweller was inspired last year (by a desire to mark her relationship with her best friends ahead of their 40th birthdays) to launch her shared friendship heart charm duo, where each friend wears one half of a heart. This is is reminiscent of the split-heart necklaces of the 1990s. ‘It is really popular at the moment,’ she says. ‘People are having kids later, or not at all, and having these lovely friendship pieces is a real statement of that love and loyalty and unity between friends, which I think is really important right now.’

Diamond jeweller Jessica McCormack recently made initialled bangles for three friends, another contemporary take on matching friendship jewellery. Her recent Tapestry collection, a ‘high-end ode to friendship’, features designs in diamond, emerald and different colours of sapphire that are inspired by the chevron and striped knotted friendship bracelets of the 1970s.

She crafted her own bracelets as a child in the 1980s. ‘I remember them being tied to the sofa leg or the back of the headrest in the car, and sitting with my sisters making them in the summers when we had nothing to do for many a week,’ says Jessica, whose Tapestry jewels come with a fabric friendship bracelet.

There has been what Monica Vinader calls a ‘renewed buzz’ around friendship bracelets in the past few years thanks to Taylor Swift fans. Swifties attending the star’s Eras Tour are swapping homemade, often beaded bracelets inspired by a lyric in the song You’re on Your Own, Kid: ‘So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it.’ Monica launched her eponymous demi-fine jewellery brand in 2008 with the Fiji friendship bracelet and now offers 20 styles. 

For many of us, friendships are our longest-lasting relationships, outside family. Following the breakdown of a couple’s marriage, Jessica de Lotz reworked the interlocking rings they wore, replacing the engraved initial of her client’s ex-husband with that of her best friend. ‘It’s [now] representing the promise of eternal love in a friendship as opposed to that of a marriage,’ she says. 

Friendship ‘is such a special relationship,’ says Cece. ‘It’s mad we don’t celebrate friends more.’