The question I get asked most is whether it's worth paying for actual gold, or gold plated over brass, when the plated stuff looks identical in the shop lighting. The answer is that it's worth it for anything that touches your skin for more than a few hours a day, because plating wears through at the parts that rub, the post, the hinge of a hoop, the bit that sits against your neck, and what's left underneath is usually a greenish base metal that nobody wants to see in a work meeting.
A decent pair of gold earrings does more quiet work in a plain wardrobe than almost anything else you own. Small studs sit under a hoodie or a shirt collar without fighting anything. A medium hoop picks up warmth against a grey jumper or a white tee in a way that a cheap bracelet never quite manages. I wear the same pair of studs with everything from a linen dress to gym kit I'm too lazy to take off before the school run, and they never look wrong, which is not something I can say about most jewellery I own. The mistake is treating gold earrings as an occasion thing kept for one good bag in a drawer, rather than something you put in and forget about for a fortnight.
Fit matters more with earrings than people expect, and it's rarely about the earring itself, it's about the hole and the ear. Heavy hoops pull on a thin lobe over a day and leave it sore by evening, so if your piercing is on the delicate side, go lighter than you think you need, especially with anything over three centimetres. Butterfly backs on studs can be stiff out of the packet and pinch for the first week, work them gently rather than forcing them. Watch for posts that are slightly too thick for an older piercing, they'll feel tight and then suddenly not, which is its own small alarm. If you've only got one pair of gold earrings in your life, make it a simple hoop around two centimetres, the kind that goes with jeans and with the one good dress you own, rather than anything with a design feature you'll tire of by March.
The real pleasure of a good pair, the proper gold kind rather than the kind that turns your ear green by August, is that you can shower in them, sleep in them, forget they're there, and they come out of a hot bath looking exactly as they went in.
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