Most gold-plated jewellery is plated at around half a micron. Ours is plated at two. Here is what that difference buys you.
A micron is a thousandth of a millimetre, which sounds like a technicality until you have owned a plated piece that went green at the edges inside six months.
Standard costume jewellery is flash plated. The industry shorthand for that is roughly 0.5 microns, sometimes less, deposited straight onto brass or steel. It looks identical to good plating in a photograph and on the day it arrives. The difference shows up at the points that rub — the edges, the high polish, the places a chain touches a collarbone — and once it wears through you are looking at the base metal underneath.
The difference shows up at the points that rub, and by then it is too late.
We plate at two microns, which is around four times that, and we plate onto 925 sterling silver rather than base metal, with a barrier layer in between. The barrier matters as much as the thickness: without it, the metals underneath migrate up into the gold over time and dull it from inside.
None of this makes a plated piece into a solid gold one, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What it means is that this is built to be worn every day for years rather than for a season, and that if the plating ever does need refreshing there is a precious-metal piece underneath worth refreshing.
It is also why the buy-back guarantee exists. We would not offer to buy something back in twelve months if we expected it to look tired by then.