When it Comes to Gold and Silver Jewellery, I’ve Never Mixed Metals — Until Now

Every year, holiday gifting season comes and goes, leaving two piles of presents in its wake. One, of things we absolutely adore, and the other, of items that we set away to be re-gifted during the new year’s slew of birthdays and house warming dinners. Gifts usually fit neatly into either of the two categories, but one present last month left me flummoxed: a pair of Swarovski earrings, featuring multiple hoops in gold-tone and rhodium finishes.

I love wearing jewellery, and I have my fair share of both yellow and white gold pieces. However, I’ve always lived by one unspoken style rule — to never wear the two together.

From the West to the East, celebrities like Hailey Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo and Deepika Padukone have been hailed as stylish exemplars of mixing metals in jewellery, and brands like Azza Fahmy, Jude Benhalim and Kismet by Milka have been favourites in this space.

But despite the high-profile names championing this micro-trend, I’ve always found the overall effect to be thoughtless and unpolished, so when stories started making the rounds last autumn about mixing metals being a major jewellery trend for the winter season, I dismissed them right away, planting the fad firmly in the realm of fashion faux pas.

To see whether or not this pet peeve of mine was rare and over-obsessive, I polled 180 of my own Instagram followers to see what the generic feeling is about mixing metals, and the results were closer than I expected. 53% said that they like mixing white and yellow gold jewellery, while 43% stated they prefer wearing only one or the other. I was surprised to learn that the effect isn’t as extremely adverse as I thought it would be, and felt more emboldened to give my new earrings a chance. When I put them on, I realised almost instantly that I didn’t hate the combination of interwoven yellow and white gold hoops — on the contrary, I quite liked it.

From a heavy reliance on matching co-ord sets to a dependence on trainers that has caused my feet to now reject any other footwear, over the years, I’ve settled into fashion habits that have been quite limiting. My personal style was once eclectic, colourful and character-driven, and this year, I’m vowing to bring that creativity back into my looks. Mixing tones of gold seems like a good place to start, and so for 2025, I aim to perfect the art of this styling trend I once renounced.

Beyond my earrings, I’m looking to rings as a good starting place for my micro-sartorial experiment, allowing gold rings to sit on the same hand as my white-gold wedding ring. It sounds trivial — but it’s a big step for me. It’s also a fitting focal area to start with, given that a recent British Vogue story found that mixed metals are poised to become a big trend for engagement rings in 2025, with some women even combining a white gold engagement ring with a yellow gold wedding band.