Elena Burgundy Floral Necklace

Choker or collarbone: a burgundy floral necklace that opens to 41 cm

The working range is 36 to 41 cm. Closed right down, it sits high on the neck and behaves like a choker, which suits a boat neck or a high collar. Let it out fully and it drops to the collarbone, where it has room to spread over an open neckline. Worth settling before the day rather than in the car, because the two settings give genuinely different looks. If you are still weighing a choker against something that sits lower, the rest of the wedding pieces is where to compare them side by side.

Small pink flowers you only pick out from close range

Between the larger burgundy blooms sit much smaller flowers in a translucent pink. They catch light rather than block it, so from across a room they read as a soft haze around the darker petals. Step closer and they resolve into separate shapes, each with its own bead at the centre. That contrast is what keeps the front of the necklace from reading as one solid mass of burgundy.

The beads doing the work

The round beads come in two tones: a warm coral and a deeper garnet. They are scattered rather than lined up in a row, so the light reaches them at different moments as you turn your head. It is a small thing, and most of the reason the piece looks alive in photographs rather than flat.

Fine metal stems, and what they mean in practice

Every flower and every bead is carried on a fine metal stem, which is how the garland holds its curve instead of dropping into a straight line. The trade-off is that a stem will bend if the necklace is pushed into a full bag. Bent is not broken here, though it does change the shape. If you would rather have something with nothing to bend, pinning a brooch to a lapel does a similar job with far less to look after.

Straightening a stem that has been knocked

Use your fingers, not pliers: hold the stem near its base, ease it back towards its neighbours and stop as soon as it looks right. Wire that thin will take a couple of gentle corrections and object to a hard one.