There’s no reason not to be both trendy and fashionable in your jewelry and accessories while also investing in something that will increase in value not only over the years but through the generations.
Yellow Gold Trending Again
This is a girl’s trend blog, after all—let’s talk fashion! While white gold was all the rave for the last decade or so, classic yellow gold has come back in style with a vengeance! As a jeweler, I can tell you that we were selling a lot of white gold crosses, pendants, and necklaces for a good decade, but that trend is starting to trend back towards women’s solid gold jewelry in many instances, especially when it comes to our women’s gold cross necklaces. Why are we seeing this trend towards solid gold?
Platinum Value Decreasing
For one thing, the precious metal platinum has gone down in value over the last decade. It was once close to $2,000 per ounce but is now around $1,000 per ounce at half the value. What does this have anything to do with yellow gold coming back into fashion? For one thing, gold is at over $1,800 per ounce as of the time of this writing—it is more expensive in its war form than the highly covered platinum metal!
Still not sure how this matters? Consider that white gold jewelry was created as a cheaper alternative to platinum. But with gold now surpassing platinum by the ounce, these metals have become comparable, and many, rather than buying, say, a women’s gold cross necklace in white gold, are now opting for the real thing—platinum. And so gold is once again overtaking the white metal.
A Return To Classic Styles
Yellow gold jewelry is trending again also because we are seeing a return to traditional, American values. Classic styles are gaining steam once again as styles go somewhat retro and return to what was once popular decades ago. It’s like a pendulum swing—yellow to white, white to yellow. That’s not to say that white gold necklaces and jewelry aren’t still very popular—they are! But we are seeing a rebalancing between metal colors in our experience as jewelry experts.
Ease Of Maintenance And Care
Gold is not white in nature. In order to create a white gold necklace, for example, you have to add other alloys like nickel to the precious metal to make it appear more white, and then on top of that, you have to plate it with a precious platinum family of metals, called rhodium. This plating, however, wears off after time and has to again be rhodium plated in order to maintain its white sheen. This is not the case with platinum, which maintains its white look, as that is the natural color of the polished and finished metal. Yellow gold, of course, needs no maintenance since it is also natural the color that you get. So little care is required. Lastly, swimming with your white gold jewelry can react to chemicals in water like chlorine—or even when showering, as a lot of household city water has chlorine in it. Whereas with classic, solid, traditional yellow gold jewelry, you do not need to worry about any of that. So go ahead, buy that women’s gold cross necklace—it’s carefree, and it’s in style!