Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

Never Is the Next New Thing

Wendy Brandes Jewelry in Entertainment Weekly

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Gorgeous blogger Brie of If You’re Into It emailed me last night, excited to say she’d spotted my Cleves swan ring in the Dec. 16, 2011, issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

I felt bad for Brie because I often get emails like this, and 99.9% of the time, I have to tell the eagle-eyed sender that it’s just a similar piece from another designer.  It’s pretty hard to surprise me with unexpected press because I have a really small business. A really, really small business! The only full-time employee is me. Whenever magazines or stylists ask to borrow jewelry, I personally handle the request, so I always know where my pieces are likely to turn up.

I even know which pieces are sold and who bought them, as I informed a philanthropy site that promoted designers who gave a percentage of proceeds to charity.  I listed a necklace on the site and planned to give profits to Minds Matter. After a while, the site contacted me and said it was going to charge for continued participation. I said I wasn’t interested because I hadn’t made any sales. The business manager challenged me and asked what “metrics” I was using to track the sales that the site was sending me. After I stopped laughing hysterically, I explained my “metrics”: I had exactly one of those necklaces in stock when I listed it with the site and I still had the damn necklace.

Anyway, because I know where all my jewelry is, I told Brie to prepare for disappointment. But I do have a Cleves ring at Broken English Jewelry in Santa Monica, Calif., so it was possible the ring was borrowed from there for a shoot. I ran to my neglected mailbox at 4 a.m. to get my copy of EW and sure enough, there was a credit for Broken English! Then I had to rummage around to find the reading glasses that I never wear so that I could get a better look at the ring in question. It’s so tiny in the photo that I’m amazed that Brie saw this. Her eyes must be as powerful as microscopes. Here’s a close-up of the ring …

My 18K gold and diamond Cleves swan ring. Click to purchase from Broken English.

… and here’s how it looks in EW. It’s being worn by Mireille Enos from the television show The Killing. Get out your magnifying glasses.

Click to enlarge

This was a very nice surprise, so thank you to EW, Broken English and Brie’s bionic eyes!

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Comments

  1. I can’t believe she caught that! I’m going to go grab my issue now so I can take a closer look.

    & congrats–well deserved!

  4. Wow I love this, so pleased to see your ring featured! I would never have spotted your ring in that photo in a million years. How awesome for her to email you to let you know!

  6. This is great! Also Mirielle looks unrecognisable as I have only seen her play dour characters. The Killing was one of the most disappointing things ever. So much promise, so little attained!

  11. Wendy,

    I am a photographer so I tend to take more than a quick glance at photos. Probably why I caught the ring even in such small size.

    I was checking Mirieille’s outfit out in the phototo because she usually dresses so plain and frumpy as characters she protrays in tv shows so I was curious to see what she was wearing. That is how I saw the ring. 🙂

    Glad it was a ncie surprise for you!