Adornment Meets Masculinity: Men's Jewellery

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For a fair few gentlemen the mere word 'Jewellery' is enough to make their pumped chests shrink and reach straight for the beers to reinstate all things masculine. When it comes to stepping foot in the jewellery world, it's fair to say that woman are pretty much catered for hand on foot for a plethora of tastes, personality and style.

Bold and bodacious adornments, dazzling multi-coloured gemstones and trend-led catwalk pieces; a womans' jewellery wardrobe is like stepping into the undiscovered world of Narnia - imagination knows no boundaries! However, if you behold the jewellery world of men you'll find it whittled down to a mere trinity of essentials: cufflinks, wedding bands and watches.

Whilst female fashion is tailored for versatility, beauty and attention, a lady can put on an understated one-tone outfit and inject a pop of eye-grabbing personality through her bejewelled accessories. On the flip side, the stereotypical approach for men and aesthetics is confined to pure functionality. Watches are there to prevent men from being late for date night, cufflinks keep his shirt sleeves from rolling into a lunch-meeting soup and his wedding ring acts as a flash warning to any wandering eyes.

By all means we're not suggesting that men should invest into the cubic zirconia encrusted body chains or shoulder-dancing statement droppers but the world of jewellery for the male specimen goes far beyond the presumed limitations we all settle upon. The notion that steering away from self-decoration as a male is slowly being stamped, bevelled, buffed and polished up into a new wave of subtle refinement as showcased through new collection pieces by Alexander McQueen, Givenchy and Marc Jacobs to name a few.

Mixing and matching flashes of stacked or twisted bracelets, decorated tie pins or rough cut black diamond rings can pay dividends in elevating the sharp tailoring of a suit by laying down a hint of personality. Men's Jewellery doesn't have to lead the imagination to looking like a precious museum piece to ogle; embossed or encrusted pieces a little rough around the edges like a statement gold chronograph wristwatch or a black gem skull bracelet keep the look understated but pack a punch in the style stakes.

The key piece of advice when branching out your jewellery game face is to treat your adornments like your tequila shots: it's all about maintaining balance. Sharp flashes of metal keep things looking less ostentatious with Ryan Gosling being a prime candidate who nails the ratio between plain jane boring and Ali-G glory-hunting. Bear in mind the proportions of your look and work with what nature graced you with - smaller wrists should magpie smaller wristwatches as an oversized watch face will only accentuate and make the arm look smaller...we wouldn't want to squander the time and effort spent weight-lifting in the gym now, would we?