Forget the Locket—This Is How Chic Mums Wear Their Kids’ Initials Now

You don’t need someone’s full name across your collarbone to keep them close. Just ask the women who have quietly retired the locket: one letter, set properly, does the same work — and reads as nothing but jewellery to everyone who isn’t you.

The engraved disc. The charm bracelet that jangles through every meeting. The name in cursive, sitting proud of the collarbone. Each one speaks before it is spoken to, telling the room what it means before the wearer has decided the room should know. Most end up in a drawer, which is its own kind of verdict.

A single initial set with lab-grown diamonds, around a carat in total, on a pavé chain fine enough to disappear under a collar. From across a room it is a line of light at the neckline. From close range, it is your daughter’s letter, or your son’s, or your own.

The ring came out of exactly that thinking, and it came first. Teneille designed it with Eddie to mark the birth of their son, Brooklyn — a single letter traced in graduated lab-grown diamonds, two millimetres to three, cut to be worn rather than kept. Enough people asked about it that it became a By Lucia piece.

It does the same job on a hand that the necklace does at a throat. A plain white shirt and a school drop-off, then everything you would wear out, and no reason to take it off in between.

It is built to be lived in. Not plated, not hollow — 9k solid gold, sitting flat against skin, on a chain that does not twist. There is a full-diamond version with around 300 stones set by hand for anyone who wants more light without more volume.

Every letter is drawn, cut and set by hand, one commission at a time. A slower way to buy jewellery, and the reason people are still wearing ours ten years on.