A letter from a reader

I have worn pearls to church for forty years. These are the first ones anybody has ever asked me about.

Six things I have noticed since homecoming Sunday, from a woman who has owned the same stiff string of pearls most of her life and never once wrote to a store about a necklace.

Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read

Let me tell you who is talking before I tell you anything else. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. Every October we drive out to West Texas for homecoming Sunday at a little white country church out past Bronte, the one Frank’s mama’s people went to for as long as anybody can remember. There is preaching in the morning, dinner on the grounds in the fellowship hall at noon, and singing in the afternoon until the light starts going gold over the mesquite. Everybody comes back for it, and everybody comes in their Sunday best.

The necklace I am writing about is the Rosette, from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. It is three fine strands of tiny pale beads, and on each strand sits one pearl, the three of them gathered together near the collarbone, two white and one dark. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.

I first saw it at that dinner on the grounds. The woman across the long table from me was about my age, in a plain navy dress, and every time she leaned in to pass the green beans those three little pearls caught the light from the windows. Half the women in that hall had pearls on. Hers were the only ones I kept looking at. I had her down as wearing her mother’s, the way we all do on homecoming Sunday. Then I noticed the dark one, a deep gray with green and blue in it when she turned, and I knew I had never seen a strand like it in anybody’s jewelry box. So while we were wrapping the leftover pie in foil, I asked her, plainly. Her name is Wynell. She laughed and said, “My mother’s pearls are in a bank box in Abilene. These I can wear.” Read on.

Mine, a year later, in the same fellowship hall. Frank took it between the dinner and the singing, and I asked him to leave my face out of it.

Here is what forty years of Sunday mornings have taught me about pearls. Most of us were given one string of them, a single tight row, and we were told it was for best. So it lives in the box for weddings and anniversaries and the odd Easter, and when it does come out it makes you look like the photograph in the church directory. The rest of the time you wear a thin little chain that disappears, or nothing at all.

I had never once thought pearls could look easy. I thought they were something you dressed up to deserve.

The morning it came. I had it out of the box and on before Frank finished his coffee.

I ordered mine from the motel in Abilene that night, and I have worn it more in these weeks than I wore my old string in ten years. Going by those weeks, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.

1

They are pearls that do not look like your mother’s pearls

Instead of one tight row there are three fine strands lying close together, and instead of forty matching pearls there are just three, gathered together a little to one side. It still reads as pearls from across a room, still dressy enough for homecoming Sunday, but it looks like something chosen this year rather than handed down. Wynell said it best. Her mother’s pearls make her feel like she is posing. These make her feel like herself.

With my cream blouse and the camel cardigan, the first cool morning we had.

★★★★★

I have a strand of real heirloom pearls I almost never wear. This one I wear every Sunday and a few Tuesdays too.

Glenda H., Merkel

2

The one dark pearl is the detail people notice

Two of the pearls are a soft creamy white. The third, on the top strand, is dark, a deep gray that turns green and blue and a little violet when the light moves across it. That one pearl is what stopped me at the dinner table, and it is what women ask me about now. None of the three is perfectly round, either. They each have a gentle unevenness to them, a soft shine rather than a glassy one, so they look found rather than factory made.

Close up, so you can see the dark one properly. Frank says it looks like a pecan in the rain.

★★★★★

That dark pearl is beautiful in person. Every lady in my Sunday school class has asked me about it.

Bobbie J., Snyder

4

It is light enough to forget you have it on

I wore it from the morning service through dinner on the grounds and the whole afternoon of singing, and by the drive back to the motel I had forgotten it was there. The beads are tiny and fine, so the whole thing is light and lies soft against the skin. My old string of pearls I was always glad to take off by two o’clock. This one I had to remember to take off at bedtime.

Holding it up at the kitchen window before church. You can see how fine the strands are.

★★★★★

So light. I wore it to a wedding and danced in it and never once fussed with it.

Rhonda L., Anson

6

The easiest present I have bought in years

There is no size to guess and no color to worry over, and it looks like a great deal more than it costs. My granddaughter Maddie turns sixteen in the spring, and the second one I ordered is already wrapped and put away in my dresser drawer for her. Wynell says she has bought three for her daughters and one for her sister, and not one of them has gone back in the box.

On my dresser, next to the church gloves I have not worn since about the time I got that first string of pearls.

★★★★★

Bought one for my daughter in law and ended up keeping it, so I had to order her another. Lovely gift.

Jo Ann W., Sterling City

The Rosette, against the pearls in the box

You can keep saving your pearls for best, like I did. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

The Rosette is $34.95. It was $70.00. I will be honest, when I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch. I have not found one. It came with free shipping, it was the necklace in the pictures, and it has been on me most days since.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that their fall jewelry comes in small runs, and this one does not stay in stock long. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than $70.00 for things that went straight back in the jewelry box, so $34.95 for the one I reach for every morning was an easy yes.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your pearls have been waiting in the box for an occasion good enough, this is where I would start. Take a look before this run sells through, because once it is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever at homecoming Sunday at a little white church out past Bronte and you see two women with three pearls apiece passing the green beans, one of them is Wynell, and the other one is me.

Peggy

THE ROSETTE PEARL NECKLACE

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

$70.00 $34.95

• Three fine beaded strands
• Three pearls, two white and one dark
• Sits right at the collarbone
• Light enough for all day wear
• Dressy for Sunday, easy with jeans
• A lovely gift, no size to guess
• Free shipping

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