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How nameplate necklaces came to rule Mother’s Day

Personalized jewelry pieces are a quintessential Mother’s Day gift, but their significance goes well beyond fashion.

How nameplate necklaces came to rule Mother’s Day

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

BY Elizabeth Segran6 minute read

Meghan Markle knows how to make a statement with a necklace. She made her relationship with Prince Harry official in 2017 by wearing a subtle gold chain bearing the letters M and H. But in the following years, her necklaces have tracked how her identity has shifted, from her career and marriage to motherhood. These days, she wears necklaces that feature her children’s initials and star signs.

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

Personalized jewelry isn’t new: In Sex and the City, the character Carrie Bradshaw famously wore a gold necklace featuring her own name. But over the past decade, hundreds of jewelry startups have launched specifically targeting moms who want to wear their children’s names around their necks. Thus, the nameplate necklace has become the quintessential gift for Mother’s Day.

[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]

The trend started in the early 2010s with startups like Tiny Tags and Mommy Jewelry, along with dozens of Etsy sellers, that mushroomed online, creating a new category called “mom jewelry.”

There were two major technological innovations that paved the way for these brands, says Melissa Clayton, who founded Tiny Tags in 2012. “Lasers were a game changer,” she says. “Suddenly, we had the technology to quickly create custom nameplate jewelry.” Then, Instagram—a nascent, highly visual platform—provided a new way to market these necklaces.

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

In the years since, hundreds of brands began to offer personalized necklaces, from startups like Aurate and Oak and Luna to established fine-jewelry brands like Maya Brenner and Monica Rich Kosann to big players like Kay and Brilliant Earth. By 2016, Google searches for “name necklaces” spiked, but particularly around Mother’s Day, when many of these brands make a significant portion of their annual sales.

The founders of “mom necklace” brands have a lot of insight into what this personalized jewelry signifies to their customers, and how motherhood itself is evolving over time. Through their brands, they’ve seen how pregnancy has become more complicated as women have children later; and how mothers feel guilty about sacrificing time with their children as their careers become more demanding.

“We’re getting a glimpse into what it means to be a mother today,” Clayton says. “And motherhood itself is always changing.”

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

The Winding Journey to Motherhood

Increasingly over the past decade, women have delayed having children. In 2014, women’s median age at the time of their first pregnancy was 26; by last year, it had climbed to 30, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In bigger cities like New York and San Francisco women are having children even later. But starting a family at an older age is often more complicated, with greater risks of infertility or pregnancy complications.

[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]

In theory, this means that trying to have a baby can sometimes be an emotionally fraught experience. And Clayton has seen this play out with her customers, who often share their stories on social media and in emails. Some mothers seek out Tiny Tags to commemorate difficult issues, like babies lost to miscarriage.

“The core of our customers are slightly older,” Clayton says. “Their journey to motherhood has not been completely linear. They’ve lost babies, they’ve experienced infertility; it has been a bumpy road.”

Jewelry has always been a highly emotional purchase, partly because people wear it daily and close to their bodies. Clayton has found that many women are attracted to Tiny Tags pieces because they can communicate a key experience in their life, whether good or bad. “Some moms have waited so long for their child, the necklace symbolizes the years it took to get there,” Clayton says. “We’ve had moms who want to commemorate the date their child was adopted or give necklaces to their egg donors. ”

[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]

Never Enough Time

Once they’ve started a family, many mothers feel stretched between the demands of work and motherhood. This has been the case for decades, but in recent years, this stress has increased dramatically. A recent large-scale study from the University of Southern California found that the majority of mothers experienced significant change during the pandemic, shouldering much of the childcare responsibility while also suffering turbulence in their careers. This, in turn, led to a range of mental health issues, including anxiety and acute stress disorder.

Monica Rich Kosann says that motherhood is increasingly complicated for women, as she’s observed over the past two decades since she founded her eponymous fine-jewelry brand. Women have always sought out her brand to celebrate their journey into motherhood, but over the years she’s found that many moms want jewelry that asserts their bond with their children even when they are away from them at the office or on business trips.

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Her brand is particularly well known for its lockets, a piece of jewelry that has been worn since at least the 15th century. In the past, people filled them with portraits, pieces of hair, and eventually photographs—all of which was designed to reflect the wearer’s bond with a beloved person. Kosann gives the locket a high-tech update by enabling customers to upload an image, which is then incorporated into the locket. Many women fill it with images of their children.

[Photo: courtesy Monica Rich Kosann]

Kosann has a wide range of customizable jewelry designed to appeal to mothers, from engravable nameplate pieces to items that feature a child’s birthstone or zodiac sign. But mothers also seem particularly drawn to the brand’s sundial collection, which focuses on the concept of time. Kosann says these necklaces encapsulate the feeling that many mothers have, that time with their children is limited. “Moms buy it because it reminds them to be in the moment because time is precious and fleeting,” Kosann says.

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

But sometimes mothers buy nameplate necklaces not for their own sake but for that of their kids. Clayton says many moms wear their children’s names around their neck to let their kids know how important they are. “One thing we hear is how much these necklaces mean to the children,” Clayton says. “They see their names around their mother’s neck and, to them, it’s a sign of love.”

[Photo: Tiny Tags]

Reclaiming Yourself

Maya Brenner, founder of an eponymous jewelry brand, is best known for her asymmetrical letter necklaces. They became a global sensation after Meghan Markle was spotted wearing one featuring her initials and Prince Harry’s, making it clear the two were an item. Overnight, sales of the necklaces spiked, causing her website to crash.

Over the past six years, these necklaces have continued to be best-sellers. Brenner says they are particularly popular among mothers who want to feature their children’s initials. But as customers flock to the brand, she encourages them to think about where they fit in to the story they are trying to tell with their necklaces.

“Women want the necklaces to reflect their identity as mothers, but sometimes I think they can get lost in their roles as wives and mothers,” Brenner says. “I encourage them to put their own initials on there as well.”

Brenner also has a service that allows customers to send in their necklaces to be altered as their life circumstances change. Women can add new initials when they have babies; sometimes, they remove their partner’s initial after a breakup or divorce. Brenner believes this reflects how our identities are fluid and evolve over time.

“I’m a mother myself, and I understand the desire to celebrate motherhood,” she says. “But I think it’s important to leave room for the idea that there are other aspects of your identity that you want to celebrate as well.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Segran, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer at Fast Company. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts More