She Wore My Damn Jewelry

There are certain things that happen in life that make perfect sense once you have enough distance from them. You look back, understand everyone's motivations, recognize your own mistakes, and eventually arrive at some mature, generous interpretation of what happened. This is not one of those things.

I used to sell handmade jewelry on Etsy. Not dainty little chains with a charm the size of a pea. I made jewelry that announced itself. Big vintage crosses. Heavy gold-filled chain. Oversized toggles. Antique pendants I would spend hours hunting down on eBay. Layered necklaces. Chunky bracelets. Pieces with enough weight that when you held them in your hand, they felt like something.

The average woman couldn't wear my jewelry. And before anyone gets offended by that, I don't mean she wasn't worthy of it. I mean you had to be comfortable wearing jewelry that was going to get noticed. These were statement pieces, especially the necklaces. You didn't put one on hoping it would quietly blend into your outfit. When you walked into a room wearing one of my pieces, you knew someone was probably going to notice it, and that was part of the point. My customer liked statement jewelry. She didn't mind layering two substantial necklaces, stacking one chunky bracelet beside another and then adding the earrings. She wasn't trying to disappear, and neither was the jewelry.

I was particular about what I made. Not everything I ordered passed inspection. If a chain arrived and felt cheap in my hand, I sent it back. I spent hours searching for vintage and antique components because I didn't want to make the same necklace 400 other people were selling. Sometimes I'd find an old vinaigrette, perfume locket or unusual pendant and build the entire piece around it.

I photographed everything carefully. I gave measurements: chain length, pendant length, width. If something was particularly heavy, I'd give the weight in grams and sometimes translate that into something a normal person could understand—about the weight of three quarters. I photographed bracelets on my arm and necklaces on a mannequin so people could see the scale. I did all of that because my jewelry wasn't inexpensive.

I priced the materials. I priced my time. I priced my experience and my eye. I priced the hours I spent finding the components in the first place. Then, because apparently I had confidence in the finished product, I added another ten percent.

One day an order came through for nearly $1,000, and I remember looking at it and thinking, Well, I have finally arrived. This is my moment. I had broken into the luxury handcrafted jewelry market on Etsy.

The woman had excellent taste, too, which made the order even more satisfying. She bought two necklaces, two bracelets and a pair of earrings, and she put them together exactly the way I would have. I would have layered those two necklaces. I would have stacked those bracelets. I would have worn those earrings with them. In fact, I liked some of those pieces enough that I had considered keeping them myself, but Craft had informed me that I could not keep everything I made. This was unreasonable but financially sound advice, so I photographed them and listed them.

Because the pieces were so bold, they had been sitting in my shop waiting for the right woman. I thought I'd finally found her.

I have always had a 15-day return policy. Returns were rare. People generally knew what they were buying because I'd given them enough photographs and measurements that there shouldn't have been many surprises. Occasionally someone would discover she didn't know the size of her own wrist, send a bracelet back, and I'd adjust it and mail it to her again. I usually ate the postage because a good Etsy review was worth its weight in gold.

By the time this particular customer contacted me, though, my circumstances had changed considerably. I had broken my arm. My Etsy shop was technically on vacation because I didn't have the strength, energy or dexterity to package jewelry and ship orders. I was trying to heal and had temporarily decided that perhaps the United States could survive without another Jennifer Maier necklace.

That's when the message arrived. She wanted to return the jewelry. The 15-day return period had already expired, but that wasn't even the part that got me. The jewelry, she said, was substantially smaller than described.

I remember thinking, How? I had given her the measurements. Not vague measurements. Actual measurements. Length. Width. Pendant size. Weight. Photographs for scale. And these were not wispy little pieces that could get lost somewhere between your collarbones. They were heavy, chunky and substantial. The materials were good. The findings were good. The chains had the kind of heft I specifically looked for because I wanted my jewelry to feel luxurious in your hand. If those pieces weren't substantial enough, I wasn't entirely sure what she had been expecting. Farm equipment, perhaps.

Technically, I could have refused the return. My policy was clear, and the deadline had passed. Practically, I felt like I couldn't. Etsy reviews mattered tremendously to a small seller, and one furious one-star review could sit there doing damage long after the $1,000 stopped hurting. So I did what small-business owners sometimes do when the alternative feels more expensive. I took the hit, agreed to the return, paid the return postage and, because the package was heavy and valuable, paid to insure it for $1,000.

Then Nosy Jennifer showed up. The woman who was returning my jewelry had an unusual name, and I had Facebook. These things happen.

I looked her up, and there she was with her family in a formal portrait. Husband. Children. Everybody arranged and dressed for the photograph. Then I noticed the jewelry. My jewelry. She was wearing the earrings and one of the necklaces. Then I looked more closely and saw the bracelets. The jewelry that was supposedly so substantially smaller than described had apparently been substantial enough for her to wear in a formal family photograph.

And she had styled it beautifully—exactly the way I would have.

I stared at that picture trying to make the pieces fit. Maybe she genuinely bought the jewelry intending to keep it, wore it for the photograph and afterward decided it wasn't right for her. That's entirely possible. I tend to wander toward the worst possible explanation when someone gives me enough material to work with, so another possibility immediately occurred to me: maybe she wanted it for the pictures.

I don't know, and I will never know. But I do know this: if I'm getting ready to have a formal family portrait made, I'm probably not choosing several pieces of jewelry I'm dissatisfied with. I'm certainly not layering the necklaces, stacking the bracelets and adding the earrings if I think the whole collection is disappointingly insubstantial. She liked it enough to wear it in a photograph, and then she took it off, boxed it up and sent it back.

Just when I thought the story couldn't get any more absurd, Nosy Jennifer discovered something else. She owned a retail boutique.

That made the whole thing downright absurd. This wasn't someone who had no idea what it meant to ask a small business to accept nearly $1,000 worth of merchandise after the return period had closed. She knew how retail worked. She knew why return policies existed. She knew what inventory cost. She knew what returns did to a small seller. She knew exactly what she was asking another small retailer to absorb.

I remember wondering what would happen if one of her customers walked into her store 15 days after her own return deadline carrying $1,000 worth of merchandise. I have my suspicions. I also had plenty of time to contemplate all of this because my arm was broken, my shop was on vacation, and apparently Facebook had become part of my recovery program.

That return helped me realize something else: I wasn't sure I wanted to do this anymore. Selling one-of-a-kind handmade jewelry isn't like selling a book. If somebody buys a copy of one of my books today, Amazon can print another one tomorrow. I don't have to sit down tonight and write a replacement book because someone bought the first one.

Every time one of my necklaces sold, it left a hole. I had to find another antique pendant, another chain, another combination of materials that worked together. I had to conceive the piece, make it, photograph it, measure it, list it and wait for the particular woman who could wear it. To keep 50 or 60 pieces in my shop, I had to be constantly creating, and I already had a full-time job.

After I broke my arm, my attention began moving elsewhere. I started Jennifer Maier Living. I started writing more. Eventually there were books. The jewelry business began feeling less like a creative outlet and more like something else I had to maintain. I still make jewelry. I just mostly make it for myself now.

As for the nearly $1,000 worth of jewelry that came home, I never relisted it. I kept it. I wear it now, and people compliment me on it all the time, which probably gives me more satisfaction than it should.

Years later, I can laugh about the whole thing. I'm not sitting around furious about an old Etsy return. The woman has almost become a cartoon character in my memory—the customer who understood retail, missed the return deadline, said my decidedly substantial jewelry wasn't substantial enough, wore it beautifully in a formal family photograph and then mailed it back to me.

Maybe there's a lesson in there about small business. Maybe it's about knowing when something you once enjoyed has become more trouble than it's worth. Maybe it's about the strange little injustices that eventually stop making us angry and start giving us material. I don't know. I do know that I still have that formal family photograph fixed in my memory, and every time I think about it, the same thought comes back.

She wore my damn jewelry.