Why do millennials love vintage style jewelry? This enduring trend has led to a shift in which materials are popular. White gold has surpassed yellow gold among millennial women buying for themselves, for instance. This has led to a boom in white gold custom jewelry, and that's changed demand and design in the industry.
Vintage Jewelry Tells a Story
Jewelry has always been about two things: presentation and escape. Vintage style jewelry offers the ability to present something that's unique and has backstory. A compelling piece that hearkens back to a particular period can serve as an ice breaker for millennials to be able to talk about their own history and preferences. Jewelry isn't as much about impressing anyone these days; it's more about helping to tell your own story.
A Meaningful Escape
That's the presentation side of things. The escape comes in the form of having a meaningful anchor to another time. Millennials are brought up in a culture with vast and immediate access to information on a scale that's never existed before. They can go and look up details and histories of different time periods. This can make them feel connected to these times.
Wearing a beautiful piece can echo a time they enjoy learning about, identify with, or simply featured designs that resonated with them. That same world of information can be overwhelming, so carrying around a beautiful design that anchors them to something they love helps millennials feel more grounded.
Why White Gold?
One reason that white gold custom jewelry has taken off is because white gold feels unpretentious. It also helps to separate them from their parents' era, where yellow gold was popular. There may also be an association with women getting married later in their lives. Pew Research reports that 72% of adults were married in 1960, compared to 50% today. The median age of a first marriage has also increased in that time, from 20.3 years old for women to 27.4.
Yellow gold is often associated with a wedding band. There are more women who aren't married today, and they may feel that white gold is more symbolic of their choices, whereas yellow gold is more attached to choices they haven't prioritized.
It comes down to beauty and quality. Vintage style jewelry resonates with millennials because it tells a tale - one that they can continue telling themselves.
