A Letter From a Reader: The Copper Bracelets (Elaine)
The young man at the coffee van on the Esplanade handed me my tea, then asked where I got my bracelets. His nan's birthday was coming up.
The two bracelets I held my tea with, and why I have not taken them off since, written down by a customer, not a shop.
Elaine · Customer · Hervey Bay, Queensland · 5 min read
Most mornings Peter and I walk Teddy along the Esplanade, and at the halfway point there is a little coffee van parked by the grass. Peter has a flat white. I have an English Breakfast, and I hold it with both hands, because the breeze off the water can be fresh first thing.
One morning the young man in the van, who must be about twenty, handed me my tea and then did not let go of it straight away. He was looking at my wrist. He said, those are nice, are they copper? Then he told me it was his nan's seventy-fifth in a fortnight and he had no idea what to get her, and could I write down where they were from.
So there I was, writing the name of a shop on a paper napkin at the coffee van, while Teddy sat on my foot and Peter's flat white went cold.
The next morning, same spot, same tea. Peter took this one.
They are from the Copper Bracelet Collection at Portsea Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Here is what I would have told him, if there had not been a queue.
I had not worn a bracelet in years
I gave up on bracelets a long time ago. Bangles clattered on the table and slid down over my hand, and anything with a clasp needed Peter and my reading glasses to do up. So my wrists have been bare, apart from my watch, for the better part of twenty years.
These are open copper cuffs, and they are adjustable. You ease them on from the side, squeeze them gently to fit your own wrist, and that is that. No clasp, no fiddling, and they stay put. They are light, too. I forget I have them on until somebody at a coffee van mentions it.
The two he noticed. The twisted one is the Nadine, the wave one is the Holly.
Two is the right number
One bracelet on its own can look like an afterthought. Two together look like you meant it. The ones I wear every day are the Nadine, a twisted cuff, and the Holly, which has a wave running along it. They are different shapes in the same warm copper, so together they look put together without being matchy. There is also the Molly, with a cross detail, and knot sets for anyone who wants it all chosen for them.
The colour gets better with time
What I did not expect is how the colour changes. When they arrived they were bright and new. After a few weeks of wearing they warmed to a softer glow, a bit like the colour of the water off the pier just before the sun goes down. They go with everything, my navy, my whites, and the cream knit I wear on cool mornings.
Where they live at night, in the little dish on my dressing table, next to my reading glasses.
All five of them on the old chopping board one morning, while I decided which two.
Why I went back for Lyn
There are thirty-eight pieces in the collection, mostly cuffs, plus a few rings and anklets, and they are all adjustable, which makes them about the easiest present there is. You do not need to know anyone's size. Lyn, Peter's sister, turned seventy this year, and she has told the family for six years that she does not need a single thing. I have ordered her two bracelets and a ring, put them in a little gift box with tissue, and hidden it in the spare room.
Lyn's present, just out of the mailer. She is not to see this letter until Christmas.
See The Copper Bracelet Collection →About the price
I will be straightforward about the price, because it was the thing that made me suspicious. The bracelets start at A$48.95, and they were A$195.95. The sets are A$61.95, down from A$247.95. The boutique says the sale is about clearing the season's stock, selling directly, with no middleman taking a cut. That is their arithmetic, not mine. I have paid more than that for one bangle that spent twenty years in a drawer.
If your wrists have been bare for twenty years because bangles clatter and clasps are a nuisance, these are the two I would hand you. And if there is a Lyn in your life who does not need anything, a third for her.
— Elaine
The Copper Bracelet Collection
- Copper cuffs: the twisted Nadine, the wave Holly, the cross Molly
- Knot sets, plus a few rings and anklets
- Adjustable, light, no clasp to fiddle with
- Warm copper tone that softens with wear, made to stack
- Thirty-eight pieces, free delivery across Australia
Sale on now. Sets from A$61.95, an easy present.