Stack Attack

How's your wrist game? From Succession's Kieran Kulkin to the Duchess of Sussex, style icons have shown how a good bracelet stack offers contrasting and complementary elements by combining different textures, shapes and weights.

- Katherine Arteche

Here’s a fun linguistic story: In Grecian times, bracelets were largely worn by men, in the fashion of leather bands that soldiers wore on their forearms as a form of armour. The distinguished ranks would often decorate theirs with silver and gold, and on occasion, with gemstones. These trinkets were known as “bracels,” from the Latin meaning “arm.” When women started to wear them, they wore more delicate versions, called little bracels or “bracel-ets.”

Today, jewellery has become synonymous with personal style rather than for its original armoured functionality. The ’70s saw a favourable approach to tennis bracelets, while the noughties were rife with one-off statement pieces. In recent times, we’re seeing all these styles put together and have accumulated into the careless cascade of gold twists and elemental curves that are effortlessly stacked on wrists.

Now, there is no perfect stack prototype. The benefit of stacking bracelets is that the look can be easily changed depending on the occasion. Here’s how you can choose your favourite pieces and get creative with a wrist stack only you could wear.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

The art of stacking is a numbers game. A good rule of thumb is to build on at least three pieces, and avoid stacking more than one-third of your forearm. Start with a timepiece which would determine where you'd prefer the stack to go-whether you're left- or right-handed.