What She Wears When No One Is Watching

The pool was at the end of the block, with the sun on it, and the wearer was in it for an hour on Sunday afternoon, with the chain still at her collarbone the whole time. The chain is stainless steel. The chain came out of the pool the same as it went in. This is the small fact that, the wearer has been thinking, deserves its own essay. The sterling silver chain would have needed to come off before the pool. The pearl strand would have needed to come off. The Golden Thread is gold-plated stainless and is fine in the pool but should not be in chlorinated water for hours. The stainless steel chain went in, stayed on, and came out, and is on her collarbone right now as she writes this. The piece does not know it has done anything remarkable.

This essay is about the material that has been quietly doing the heaviest daily work in the brand's inventory and that has not yet had its own essay written about it. The brand has written essays about 925 sterling silver, about pearls in summer, about the Golden Thread. Stainless steel has been the material that holds the daily register and has not yet had its essay. This is that essay.

What Stainless Steel Is

Stainless steel is an alloy of iron, chromium, and small amounts of other metals, designed for one specific quality: it does not corrode. The chromium reacts with oxygen at the surface to form a thin invisible layer that protects the metal from rust, tarnish, and the slow degradation that affects most other metals over time. This is the property the wearer is paying for, knowingly or not, when she chooses a stainless steel chain. The chain that does not tarnish, does not react, does not need the small nightly ritual of wiping, is the chain made of stainless steel.

The material was developed in the early twentieth century for industrial use. It was used in surgical instruments before it was used in jewelry, because the surgical instrument that needed to be sterilized in autoclaves for years without degrading was the instrument that needed to be made of stainless steel. The material entered the jewelry world later, and it entered with the small reputation problem that comes from having been developed for industrial purposes first. The wearer who is buying stainless steel is buying a material that was, in its first life, the material the hospital reached for.

This is, in the brand's view, the strongest possible argument for stainless steel in jewelry. The material that is good enough for surgical instruments is good enough for the chain at the wearer's collarbone that needs to survive the pool, the shower, the gym, the bonfire, the sunscreen, the saltwater, the year of daily wear that the wearer is going to ask of it. Stainless steel is not the second-tier metal pretending to be the first-tier metal. Stainless steel is its own material with its own argument, and the argument is durability.

What Stainless Steel Survives

The list is short, because it is easier to say what stainless steel does not survive than what it does. Stainless steel survives the pool, the ocean, the shower, the gym, the hot tub, the kitchen, the sunscreen, the perfume, the sweat of a long August afternoon, the salt of an ocean swim, the chlorine of a hotel pool. Stainless steel does not survive being run over by a car. The list of what it does not survive is approximately that short.

The pool is the test case the wearer notices most. Chlorine is hard on most jewelry materials, and the chains and pieces that survive a summer of pool exposure are the pieces made of stainless steel or gold-plated stainless. Sterling silver in a chlorinated pool will start to develop tarnish faster than it would in normal wear. Pearls in a chlorinated pool can be damaged within hours. The wearer who is going to the pool with a stainless steel chain is the wearer who does not have to think about whether to take the chain off before getting in.

The ocean is the second test. Saltwater is corrosive to most metals over time, and the pieces that hold up to repeated saltwater exposure across a beach summer are again the stainless steel pieces. The wearer who is swimming in the Atlantic on a Saturday in July and wants to keep her chain on can do so if the chain is stainless steel. The same chain in sterling silver would benefit from coming off before the swim.

The sweat-and-sunscreen combination is the everyday version of the same test. Most wearers do not swim daily, but most wearers do sweat daily, particularly in summer, and most wearers do wear sunscreen. The piece that handles the daily combination of sweat and sunscreen without needing the nightly wipe-down ritual is the stainless steel piece. The wearer who has been forgetting to do the nightly silver-wipe and feeling guilty about it can, in the stainless steel chain, simply stop feeling guilty.

The kitchen is the small test most wearers do not think about until it matters. The wearer cooking dinner is in contact with water, heat, food acids, soap, and the occasional small splash of oil. The piece that handles this without degradation is the stainless steel piece. The wearer who keeps her chain on while she washes the dishes is the wearer in stainless steel.

Who Stainless Steel Is For

Stainless steel is for the wearer who wants jewelry to be part of her body rather than part of her daily decision-making. The wearer who is taking pieces on and off three times a day, who is remembering to wipe the silver every night, who is keeping a small mental note of which pieces can go in the pool and which cannot, is the wearer who has a relationship to her jewelry that is more high-maintenance than she wants it to be. Stainless steel removes most of the maintenance.

The piece that goes on in the morning and stays on through the workout, the shower, the meeting, the lunch, the swim, the dinner, the dishes, the second shower, and the going-to-bed without needing to be removed at any point is the stainless steel piece. The wearer who has been waiting for the chain that does not require her attention is the wearer the stainless steel chain was designed for.

This is not the same wearer as the sterling silver wearer or the gold wearer. The sterling silver wearer has a different relationship to her jewelry, more ritualistic, more aware of the small daily care, more invested in the piece as something that ages with her and develops the patina that becomes the heirloom argument. The gold wearer has yet another relationship, more about permanence and value retention.

The stainless steel wearer is the wearer who wants the piece to be a piece of her daily uniform without being a small daily project. This is, the brand has come to think, the largest single category of wearer, and it is the category the brand's stainless steel pieces have been quietly serving for years. The chain in stainless steel is the chain for the wearer who has decided that her jewelry is going to be part of how she gets dressed and not part of how she manages her possessions.

What Stainless Steel Does Not Do

Stainless steel does not develop a patina. The piece that comes out of the box looking like a chain will, ten years later, still look like a chain. This is, for most wearers most of the time, exactly what they want. For the small number of wearers who are buying jewelry as an heirloom argument, with the intention of passing it down to a daughter or a niece in twenty or thirty years, stainless steel is not the material. The argument for the heirloom is the argument the pearl strand makes, and the argument for the daily piece is the argument the stainless steel chain makes. The wearer can own both.

Stainless steel also does not have the same warmth-to-skin behavior as silver. The piece warms to body temperature more slowly than sterling silver and reads slightly cooler against the skin. Most wearers do not notice this. The wearer who is sensitive to the temperature of metal against her skin in winter may prefer silver for that reason. The wearer who is buying a piece for summer and wants the cooling effect of a slightly cooler metal will, paradoxically, prefer stainless steel.

The piece does not tarnish, which means the piece does not develop the small visual evidence of having been worn. The sterling silver chain that has been on the wearer for a decade has a softer, slightly warmer surface than the chain when it was new. The stainless steel chain that has been on the wearer for a decade looks the same as it did the day she bought it. The first wearer has a piece that has aged with her. The second wearer has a piece that has been quietly doing its job the whole time.

The chain is at the wearer's collarbone now, as it has been for the last four months. The chain went in the pool yesterday. The chain will be on her again tomorrow, when she goes to work, and the day after that, when she swims again, and the day after that, when she sleeps in it because she has not taken it off in weeks. The piece does not need her attention. The piece does not require her ritual. The piece is doing the small, quiet, unglamorous work of being the chain at her collarbone, every day, in every condition, for as long as she wants it there.

This is what stainless steel knows. It knows that the wearer wants jewelry to be part of her body, not part of her project. It knows that the wearer's daily life is full of water and heat and motion, and that the piece that survives all of it is the piece the wearer keeps. It knows that the wearer is not asking for an heirloom; the wearer is asking for a chain. Stainless steel is the chain.