Jewel And The Gang
Some of you might know the Papergang from my last year’s reviews of their monthly stationery boxes. Jewellery Gang is a subscription service from the same people at a company called OhDeer from the UK. And it follows a pretty similar idea: When you subscribe you will get a package every month delivered right to your doorstep and in this package, you will get a handcrafted necklace or better say a charm. Because that’s basically what you are doing with this subscription: Building up a charm collection that you can switch around and wear however you want. And I got some of their charms so let’s review them together 😉
As a quick disclaimer, I just want to say that I have not subscribed to the Jewellery gang yet and all of the charms which I can show in this review I have gotten from a sale on the OhDeer Website. That’s mostly due to my own style since I really like the idea of a minimalistic necklace, but I never really wore necklaces all that much in my life. So understandably so, I just wanted to try them out, but I did not want to get a whole subscription, so seeing some of the designs being sold in a sale, I took the chance and bought them right away. Still, I got them mostly delivered as they would have come, if I would have had a subscription, just wanted to let you all know^^
The charms come in beautiful blue boxes with golden or silver foiling, depending on which version of the gold you got, on the outside. They feel very premium to hold in your hands and they also make great gifts, if a charm does not suit your style. As for the charm itself you can choose between two styles: get them in 14k yellow gold or in white gold. Since I like to wear silver Jewellery normally, I decided to get my pieces in white gold, which at least would fit better with my silver rings. As far as I understood, you don’t really get to choose the charms, you just have to wait and see if it’s something you like. Also together with the handcrafted charm every month you get a new gold plated or sterling silver chain. So you can either wear charms of your collection together on one chain or each charm on an individual chain.
If you have a subscription there is also the possibility of “winning” a special charm every month which is said to be worth up to £500, if that’s something you are interested in. But since I bought my charms from the sale, I don’t think that I have the option of receiving something like that at least for this review. I guess it’s a cool idea, since it can be really rewarding for the subscribers, but since I always used to wear jewellery under 50€, it’s not something I would be really able to appreciate I guess xD
Just for clarification, I want to say that even though I go these charms in the sale, I had no idea which charms I would get, I actually did not even know how many charms I would get xD It was basically advertised as a kind of mystery box containing enough Jewellery and the Gang keepsake boxes to either build up your own collection or have enough gifts for your friends and family for the rest of the year. I paid around £90 for it and considering it was a sale and a normal one-year subscription containing 12 necklaces would cost around… Actually I checked the website multiple times on different days and it seems like they are undergoing some kind of work and I can’t see their pricing, but when I remember correctly last time I checked it was about £120. I was expecting something like that, maybe 10-12 necklaces. And with 13 different necklaces currently available on their site, I kinda hoped to get a good variety of them. If I would have been able to choose I would have loved to get the moon necklace, the snake necklace, and maybe the picture frame as my top 3 🙂
What I actually received in the end kinda surprised me because I got WAY MORE xD In my box which was actually packaged like a mystery box, I received 24 different items in 24 individual boxes. And even though I have only bought the white gold versions(I have checked that) of the necklaces I received both the yellow and the white gold ones, which I am not even mad about. It’s not that I hate golden jewellery but if I need to decide between them the silver looking ones will be the ones I most likely wear often. But this way I can have them both, which is kinda awesome.
I now can also tell you more about how the two versions differ from each other! Aside from the different coloured foiling on the outside you also get a different inside. The white gold charms come in grey velvet-like pouches a big one for the charm and a smaller one for the chain. For the yellow gold ones, they come in a more orange coloured pouch. Both of them have a little card on the inside displaying the design of the charm and the topic which the designers had in mind when creating them with silver or golden foil, again depending on your choice of jewellery.
The charms themselves feel very premium, even though they are very small they have a certain weight to them and the ones with the dangling pieces, like the stars on the cloud charm, also feel very snug. The chains feels okay too, some of them had been tieing themselves into a knot inside of the pouches, but nothing which could not be fixed. A bigger problem to me personally is the fact that the chains are pretty short. You can’t wear them as they have displayed on the website: One chain with a charm and just a chain under it. All chains are the same size and will be very tight around your neck, which for me is not ideal, I like longer chains more and actually would love for the Gang behind the Jewellery to have different sizes available. But I guess the problem can be easily fixed by just buying a new chain that better fits your individual preference and I feel like the charm is more in focus here anyway.
I do like the different designs you can get in these boxes, they have quite the range from animals like the snake and the bear, over plants like the cactus and the palm tree, stellar objects such as the moon and the cloud and classics like the key and the heart. If the designers go on like this, I feel like everybody will get something which fit them and their style in this subscription. But that also means that if you have say a one-year subscription, you will get some charms that just don’t suit you. I think that is almost unavoidable. This is why it would make sense to maybe share a subscription with someone. I will definitely use some of the charms I got as birthday presents this year 😉
Final Verdict
Out of the 3 charms I really wanted to have, I got every single one! Actually out of the collection so far, I am missing only one charm, the wishbone 😛 I am looking forward to trying them out, combining them with different outfits and with each other, so far I am very happy with what I got. But I have to say, there is a downside to things, which is that I don’t know if I would have gotten the charms if I would have not seen them on sale. I do really like what the designers are doing, but I don’t think I would have paid as much or even more, as I did now to get a subscription where technically 50% or again more charms would not fit my style. But maybe it is for you or you know just the person whom you could share the charms with and split the costs. Then maybe this subscription could be something for you 🙂 Also, I see more possibilities for it in the future! Nowhere on the website do I see that they plan on only creating necklaces, so who knows maybe rings or bracelets could be coming in the future too! That would be really interesting for me 😉
But as excited as I am about all of those things, I have a suspicion… With the company behind Jewel and the Gang basically throwing the necklaces out, giving me double than what I had paid for and their website not being available for days, it does not seem like the subscription itself was well received. I can only speculate why that is, maybe high-quality Jewelry and an affordable subscription don’t really go hand in hand or maybe the fact that their collection did not really have a theme to it, made it hard for people to invest in something they would not keep most of anyway. Maybe they can repair what’s broken and the new collection will be much better, or maybe it will discontinue. I guess that’s just something we have to see and something you have to keep in mind when thinking about subscribing to yourself. If there are one or two designs, in particular, you really like, you can also consider buying them from the OhDeer Website itself. Just wanted to let you know 😉
Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress