Your favourite watch-obsessed jewellery addict is back, and this month we are turning it all the way up.
May is a big month in the jewellery calendar. Mother’s Day means there are genuinely beautiful things to be found out there right now, but May also happens to be my birthday month. And as a Gemini who fully believes her birth month is a legitimate reason to go full sparkle, full shine, full brilliant – I am not holding back.
More often than not, when someone hears “diamond,” they think jewellery. An engagement ring, a tennis bracelet, diamond stud earrings. I am here to tell you otherwise. Your watch, believe it or not, can be your diamond showstopper. Benny Blanco’s custom Jacob & Co. timepiece, dripping in Ashoka-cut diamonds, is proof enough. While most of us are not traipsing around in a million-dollar watch on the regular, a gorgeous pavé-set Manchette makes the same argument at a rather more reasonable entry point.
Let’s get into it.
Step 1: The Anchor
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
I was first introduced to the Frederique Constant Classics Manchette last year, and it was love at first sight. It has edge, feels more sculptural cuff than conventional timepiece, and practically begs to be stacked. With a 25.7 x 20 mm rectangular case on a seven-link Clou de Paris bracelet, a dial pavé-set in 158 diamonds, and a case and bracelet that read as one continuous piece on the wrist, the Manchette makes you feel like that quintessential cool girl. This month, she gets to set the tone for our Cool Girl Stack.
Step 2: The Personality
Once upon a time, Links of London was my pick-me-up brand. I loved every single piece they made, and if I am being honest, I am still grieving the day they closed their doors in 2020. This skull bracelet is one of the pieces from those days, and I felt that it earned its place in this stack precisely because it has that history. Believe it or not, I was actually reminded of it because I stumbled across an old picture of me wearing it. Wrist stack inspiration can truly strike anywhere.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
The bracelet has silver skull beads threaded onto a dark braided cord with a pull-string closure, sitting close to the wrist in a tight row. The skulls have years of wear in them, detail and patina in all the right places. The touch of edge, the hint of darkness, the suggestion that this wrist belongs to someone who is not entirely here to be polished and proper. The Manchette is giving cool girl. The skulls are making sure everyone knows it.
Step 3: The Sparkle
Not being one to shy away from attention, it is time to add a little shine to this birthday stack. Enter the Swarovski Una Angelic Bracelet in white crystal and rhodium plating. Each round crystal sits framed in its own halo of clear crystal pavé, which means every single stone is catching light from multiple angles at once. Luminous, high-shine, and doing just enough without trying to compete with 158 pavé diamonds. And the juxtaposition of all that sparkle sitting right next to a skull bracelet? That is exactly what makes it brilliant (pun intended).
The other thing that I love about this piece is that it is the most affordable one in the stack. It is a little reminder that a great stack does not require a uniform level of investment across every piece. Mixing and matching price points is part of what makes it interesting, and frankly, part of what makes it yours.
Step 4: The Texture
Pearls have been having a bit of a revival in my life lately, and I have been enjoying finding new ways to weave them into my looks. For this stack, I imagined a long pearl necklace wrapped repeatedly around the wrist until it became a layered cuff. The softness of the pearls against all that silver and pavé felt compelling in theory, something organic cutting through the sharper lines of the stack. They also make a quietly brilliant statement: the irony of excess in its simplest form.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
Step 5: The Edit
So here is the thing about building a stack: there are no hard rules. Sometimes you look at your wrist and something is missing, so you add. If you were here last month, you might remember that is exactly what we did. But this month, I think we edit back.
Now that I have everything on, I have to be honest with myself. The pearls looked perfect in my head, and I still stand by the idea of them, the endless romantic in me always will. But something is not sitting quite right. It feels a little too busy, and I say that as someone who genuinely believes in maximalism. The Manchette, the skull bracelet and the Swarovski Una Angelic Bracelet are already telling a complete and cohesive story: cool, brilliant, a little dangerous, and unapologetically celebratory. The pearls, on the other hand, are pulling the stack somewhere I do not want to go. So, as Coco Chanel always said, removing one accessory is a must before leaving the house. Consider this me taking her advice. Off go the pearls.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
The Cool Girl Stack, locked and loaded: the Manchette, the skull cord, the Swarovski Una Angelic Bracelet. Three pieces that make perfect sense together and look like they have always belonged on the same wrist. Sometimes you just have to trust the edit.
Haute Take
If the Cool Girl Stack is full birthday sparkle, the Haute Take belongs to another version of me entirely: somewhere in Paris, heading to dinner impossibly late, a Ladurée macaron in hand and diamonds catching the streetlights along the way.
Meet the Paris Stack.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
True Parisian style has never been about excess for the sake of excess. It is about precision. Restraint. Choosing exactly the right thing and letting it speak quietly. That is precisely why the Frederique Constant Classics Carrée Small Seconds works here. The rectangular case, diamond bezel, and small seconds counter at six o’clock feel elegant without ever becoming precious, while the black crocodile-embossed leather strap grounds the entire watch and keeps it feeling sharp rather than delicate. She is the composed one in the room, and yet impossible to look away from.
Beside it sits the Chanel Eternal N°5 Bracelet in 18K white gold, set with brilliant-cut diamonds and a bezel-set centre stone. This piece feels especially personal to me. One of my favourite memories from living in Paris was spending an afternoon at Atelier Lesage during Fashion Week, surrounded by hand-drawn sketches by Karl Lagerfeld himself. The N°5 motif, rendered in diamonds, carries that same energy: deeply considered, instantly iconic, and unmistakably Chanel. Together, the Carrée and the Chanel bracelet create a stack that feels architectural, polished, and quietly impossible to ignore. The Paris Stack, in other words.
(P.S. Purely as a public service announcement, both also happen to make excellent gifts.)
Style Tips
A great stack never really stops at the wrist, and this month, my rings are doing just as much storytelling.
Photo credit: Zahra Hemraj
The Links of London Watch Over Me Moon Ring anchors the entire ring stack. Dotted with white diamonds that I have always imagined as tiny angels above, it serves as a quiet reminder that the people we love never entirely leave us, a message of light from the brand that will forever hold a piece of my heart. It feels especially fitting during my birthday month: reflective without becoming sentimental.
Next to it sits the Chanel Eternal N°5 Ring, extending the visual language of the Paris Stack from wrist to hand in a way that feels intentional rather than overly coordinated.
And finally, the 18K white gold and diamond ring from the Gold Souk in Dubai. The first real diamond ring I ever purchased for myself, and still one of the most meaningful. A reminder that sometimes the most important luxury purchases are the ones tied to personal milestones rather than occasions.
Three rings, three very different stories, one cohesive stack. Et voilà, May is in full bloom.
And with that, I am off to put on my party hat (ahem, tiara) and settle in with The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo. Chanel on the wrist, Coco in hand. Honestly, it feels like the only appropriate ending for a birthday stack built around the House. Because if anyone understood the art of dressing entirely on your own terms, it was Coco Chanel.
For more stack inspo, follow along on IG: @torontowatchgirl
Next month in The Stack: we are bringing the men along for the ride.
Featured in this month’s stack are the Frederique Constant Classics Manchette ($6,495 CAD) and Classics Carrée Small Seconds ($6,250 CAD), the Swarovski Una Angelic Bracelet ($249 CAD), and the Chanel Eternal N°5 Bracelet ($17,150 CAD) and Eternal N°5 Ring ($13,450 CAD).
