The ‘Nobody Wants This’ accessory that everybody wants

In the latest season of Nobody Wants This, a gold nameplate necklace gifted to Joanne (Kristen Bell) by her boyfriend, Noah (Adam Brody), serves as a plot line. While I won’t go into spoilers here, the necklace by Jennifer Meyer (also a close friend of the show’s creator, Erin Foster) is serving as a sartorial plot twist while also bringing back into the spotlight this popular style.

This isn’t the first time a nameplate necklace has hit the screen and caused a ripple. Many consider Sarah Jessica Parker’s ‘Carrie’ necklace, worn in the early 2000s on Sex and the City (SATC), as the piece that set this trend into motion. But what most don’t realise is that nameplate jewellery has strong cultural and social roots.

The origins of this trend can be traced back to the Egyptians, who wore personalised amulets and rings. Legend has it that a nameplate necklace was even found in the ruins of the Titanic. In the early ’90s, Jennifer Lopez and Lil’ Kim wore diamond-encrusted versions on red carpets and in their music videos, cementing its popularity in Black, Latino and hip-hop culture. Patricia Fields, the stylist for SATC, noted that she was also inspired by the kids she saw in New York neighbourhoods.

There was so much to unearth about the nameplate and its significance that two friends, the documentary filmmaker and cultural anthropologist Marcel Rosa-Salas and writer and editor Isabel Attyah Flower, created a podcast episode, an Instagram account, and a book titled The Nameplate on the style, published by Penguin Random House in 2022. The nameplate, they theorised, was a proud declaration of identity, especially for marginalised communities.

In the mid 2000s, when I worked at Vogue, Rosena Sammi, a South Asian jewellery designer based in New York, did her version of the nameplate in Devnagari script; I still wear mine today. Last week, new mum and actor Kiara Advani wore her new status with a ‘Mama’ necklace. Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Rani Mukerji all like to wear their children’s names.

These nameplates are often stacked with initial pendants. In a later episode of Nobody Wants This, Joanne adds in a ‘J’ pendant that she rocked in the previous season. Whether you choose to wear your entire name or just your initials, it’s clear that when it comes to accessories, your name is the ultimate personal style statement.

Below, see our edit of nameplate and initial necklaces to add to cart.