The Adjustable Chain Blog · Grace Blooms Adjustable Chains
9 Reasons the Adjustable Chain Is the One You Reach For
Open most jewelry boxes and you will find the same thing. A lot of pieces, and two or three that actually get worn.
The adjustable chain keeps ending up in that second group, and it took me a while to work out why. Prettier things sit in the box unworn. This one fits whatever you happen to put on that morning, and that turns out to matter more than pretty.
Here are nine reasons, in the order they actually come up.
1. One chain gives you four lengths
Not four in a loose way. Four lengths you can point at. 14 inches, 18 inches, 20 inches and 24 inches, on one chain.
Instead of buying a 14 inch chain, an 18 inch chain, a 20 inch chain and a 24 inch chain, you buy one and set it where you want it. That's four necklaces worth of looks out of one thing that doesn't tangle with itself in a drawer.
2. It fits the neckline you actually put on
You get dressed, you look in the mirror, and the necklace is wrong. Too short for the sweater, or sitting right on the collar of the shirt.
With a fixed chain that's the end of the conversation. You take it off and start over, or you wear it wrong. With this one you hold the gasket, pull the chain straight through, and it's right. That's the entire fix, and it happens where you are standing.
3. Your pendants finally get worn
Most of us have a charm or a pendant sitting in a box because the chain it came on was thin, or the wrong length, or it broke years ago.
Open the clasp, slide the pendant on, close it. Thirty seconds and the piece is back in your life. One chain and a small handful of charms will get you further than four more necklaces will.
4. You can put it on by yourself
So if you have ever had your arms up behind your neck, working at a clasp you can't see, getting your hair tangled in it, and finally given up and asked someone to fasten it for you, I have had that morning too.
Set the chain out to 24 inches, slip it over your head, then pull it down to where you want to wear it. You never have to reach behind your own neck again.
One honest note. That works because of the length, not because of anything clever. A chain that only reaches 22 inches won't clear an adult head, and I'm not going to tell you it does. The over the head part belongs to our chains that reach 24 inches and up.
5. Two of them layer, without owning four
The layered look is really just two chains at two different lengths. With fixed necklaces you have to already own the right two. With adjustable ones you own two chains and you set them.
Gold on top and silver below, or the other way around. The rule about never mixing metals went away a long time ago and nobody misses it.
6. It packs small and it does the whole trip
This one comes up every time I talk to a woman who travels.
You're packing for six days and you don't know what you'll feel like wearing. One adjustable chain covers the daytime and the dinner, so it is one small thing in the bag instead of three that arrive knotted together.
All our chains are hypoallergenic and nickel free, so there is nothing to worry about wearing one several days running.
7. It goes with the dressy thing and the everyday thing
Some jewelry only knows how to do one job. Your walking shoes don't go to dinner and your dinner shoes don't go walking.
A plain chain doesn't have that problem. Short and bare it is quiet enough for a work shirt. Long with a good pendant on it, it holds up next to a dress. Same chain, two completely different jobs, and you did not have to own two.
8. The extra length hangs pretty
When you shorten the chain, the extra falls down the back of your neck. That's the one thing women ask me about before they buy, so I would rather say it first.
It hangs pretty, pretty all the way down the back, and it catches the light when you turn. I have had people tell me afterward that they noticed the little chain coming down the back, and that it was pretty. Set the chain long and there is almost no tail at all.
9. It is the one that gets worn
This is the whole thing, and the other eight reasons are really just the parts of it.
The best necklace you own is not the most expensive one. It is the one that is right for what you have on, that you can put on without help, that takes whichever pendant you are in the mood for, and that is sitting there ready when you are already running late.
We have sold millions of this style of chain over the years, and that is the reason why. Not because it is the fanciest thing we make. Because it is the one that gets worn.
Every woman should have one in the box. That's the piece I'd put in a jewelry box first, before anything else.
If you are picking your first one
Take a 24 inch. It gives you all four settings, it goes over your head, and it will hold whatever pendant you want to hang on it. Gold or silver, whichever you already wear the most of.
If you want to see every length on a real person before you decide, I shot them all in this length guide.
Set it once, pull it straight through, and wear it at that perfect length.