TikTok’s eye colour bracelets and the rise of extreme personalisation

If you’ve stepped into a crafts shop recently, it’s likely that along with rows of textured paper, glitter pens and glue guns, you’ll have also spotted some people staring deeply into each other’s eyes by the beads section. As part of a new trend, Gen Z are hand-picking beads that match the colour of their loved one’s eyes and stringing them into cutesy bracelets. Think of it as the new wave of half-heart necklaces and promise rings, except these emblems of love are hyper-personalised and DIY. 

In case you’re more online than offline, you’ll recognise this as the eye colour bracelet trend from TikTok which has 104.4 million related posts at the time of writing. Although this custom jewellery may remind you of Carrie Bradshaw’s infamous name necklace or Swifties beading bracelets as a symbol of their fandom, the eye colour bands stand out in the extreme intimacy that they represent. They are a careful amalgamation of all the shades and hues that make up your partner or BFF’s eye colour, information that’s only privy to those who can stand close enough to lean in for a kiss or at the very least, a warm hug. 

People have been creating personalised jewellery since time immemorial. In the Stone Age, humans made jewellery from bones and teeth to remember the deceased. From the Middle Ages to the Victorian era, people stored their loved ones’ hair as relics in lockets and bracelets. Notably, during the American Civil War soldiers would clip off strands of hair for their partners as a keepsake in case they never made it back, in a macabre but romantic gesture.

@sweet.as.tandy i love how they turned out! (i dropped beads all over my floor plz help) @Lucas #bracelets #crafts #fyp #fyppage #eyecolor #jewelrymaking #beadsjewelry #trending #couple #boyfriend ♬ trees and flowers by strawberry switchblade – Eissej

These days, we’re evidently still keen to keep our friends and partners close via jewellery and beyond. Earlier this year, a video of Kylie and Kendall Jenner went viral for showing off a rather endearing, fresh way of moulding pots called ‘hug pottery’. The sisters hugged each other over a potter’s wheel to let their joint-at-the-hip torsos determine the shape of their clay vase. Patrick Johnston, the California-based ceramicist whose studio the Jenners borrowed, tells Dazed that the vase was a present for Kris Jenner. “It was the hug that was heard around the world, everyone wants to do it now. Last week I had a family of nine people hug a pot to make it truly theirs,” he says. 

Several clay studios across the world now offer hug pottery as a bonding experience to share with your partner, sibling or best friend. If you’re not a fan of the potter’s wheel, you can also pick paint to create hug T-shirts, yet another TikTok-famous gifting fad that has over 80.2 million related posts on the platform. As the name suggests, people dip their arms into a colour of their choice and then step into a deep embrace, holding each other tight while the paint on their hands leaves a peculiar imprint on the back of their partner’s tee. 

Each of these presents are fighting to be more distinctive and personalised than the last, but the need they fulfil isn’t new. Y2K witnessed an explosion of T-shirts with custom photographs and necklaces that spell out your crush’s name. However, today’s objects differ in that they are almost aggressively unique: the shape of the vase, the imprint of the hand, or the colour of the eye are ultra-specific to the gift giver and receiver, becoming a testament of their bond.

@kcorporation Kylie and Kendall make pottery and she creates their vase #kyliejenner #kendalljenner #pottery #vase #hug #cute #thekardashians #sisters ♬ sure thing remix – ♡viktorija

A constant reliance on devices has also created a yearning for the physical, for tactile and tangible experiences where they can actually see and touch their friends, not just double tap and comment. “We have always wanted to see our selfhood reflected in objects, whether that’s a keychain with your name or the inscribed rings that were gifted in Ancient Greece,” says Sasha Mills, integrated creative at The Digital Fairy. “The [recent] move is towards more bodily expressions of selfhood within objects. It is a pushback towards the last several years on the internet that have seen us become increasingly alienated from our physical forms.” 

What better way to reconnect with our bodies than through gifts that were intentionally moulded just for you? In the midst of an extended loneliness epidemic, these hyper-physical presents also serve as a reminder that you’re part of a tangible, real-life community. As cultural commentator Tariro Makoni puts it: “When we have everything at our fingertips – same day delivery with Amazon and Net-a-Porter – knowing that someone was hyper-intentional with your gift is actually a status symbol. It represents more cultural capital than other things do.”

Essentially, in an era of mass production and convenience, rough-around-the-edges handmade objects that allow a little space for imperfection are increasingly valuable. They represent something that’s truly yours: not just another product churned out by our consumerist culture. Essentially, today, the more personalised and intimate an object, the more bragging rights to show off how special and loved you are.