What Are the Best Studs?

These tiny pearls with 14-karat solid-gold posts were the first thing I ever bought from Catbird, the beloved Brooklyn studio known for the daintiest designs. I’ve had them for years, and they look just as they did when I unboxed them. Before, I could only find this size of pearl — 4 mm., to be exact — on earrings designed for babies. It’s a classic that comes at just under $80 for the pair.

Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio likes Maison Miru’s Nap Earrings, so named because they have flat backs instead of traditional butterfly backs, so the posts can’t poke the side of your head when you’re lying down. She wears the 18-karat gold-plated Little Sphere design in her second lobe piercing. Though the default post length for a pair is 6 mm., you can also get a longer 8-mm. version, and you might want to measure your ears according to this helpful guide because “you can’t ‘tighten’ a flat back in the same way you can with a butterfly back,” Trolio says. These aren’t the easiest to put on — Trolio needed her husband’s help, even when following the brand’s useful how-to — but the earrings have stayed secure through showering, sleeping, and swimming for over a year.

A nod to her line of work, these gold-plated, butter-shaped earrings were an impulse buy for Hannah Selinger, a James Beard Award–nominated journalist and food writer. “I wanted something fun,” she says. Not only playful, they’re under $50 for a pair, making them the cheapest studs on this list. And if butter isn’t your thing, there are egg, olive, and corn-on-the-cob designs too.

If you’re looking for an entry into the world of diamonds, you can’t go wrong with Catbird’s Pinpricks, another pair of studs I own and love. Because there are no prongs on the diamonds — they’re fastened to the 14-karat yellow-gold posts with platinum — it looks like each jewel is floating in your ear. Smaller than the 4-mm. pearl studs above, the diamonds are very blink-and-you’ll-miss-them. A single stud is $118, while the pair goes for $236.

Sandeep Salter, owner of Salter House, introduced me to the natural designs of Minnesotan maker Ruby Pierce (whose founder, Lucinia Estep, lives in a farmhouse on the outskirts of St. Louis). The brand’s earrings are handmade with semiprecious stones like rose-cut labradorite, cabochon turquoise, and watermelon tourmaline. Salter likes the slightly “medieval” look of these studs, which feature sterling silver and metallic marcasite. Because of the pavé setting, Salter says, the earrings give off a “beautiful sparkle.” (A tip that Salter received from Estep herself: Gently scrubbing the earrings with a soft toothbrush will help keep them shiny.)

The Dot Stud from Kathleen Whitaker is like a paillette for your ear and comes in five different sizes: tiny (1 mm.), small (3 mm.), medium (4 mm.), large (5 mm.), and extra-large (6 mm.). Serena Mitnik-Miller of Los Angeles’s General Store has had the large version for a decade, wearing it in one ear for months at a time while she mixes and matches it with other earrings across multiple piercings. She calls the style a “classic that everyone should own,” praising it as “not too fussy, yet refined.”

Mallory Rice, a writer and editor, didn’t get her ears pierced until she was in her 30s, and took some time to figure out what kind of earrings she liked. But when she saw Sapir Bachar’s work at Tangerine, she was hooked. “Everything Sapir Bachar designs feels substantial, sculptural, feminine, and warm all at once,” she says, describing this pair as a “stud-hoop hybrid.” The design — which is similar to Yam’s above — is meant to be a sort of postmodern pearl, done in spherical sterling silver. “They’re interesting enough to stand on their own but subtle enough that I don’t have to think too hard about when I want to wear them — I don’t think about it at all, really,” she says, adding: “If I were a more honorable person I’d probably take them out for sleep, but most of the time I don’t and it’s been fine.”

As a complement to her more minimalist clothing tastes, Strategist contributor Mya Gelber goes all out with “’80s-inspired big grandma” earrings, including these ones with a ripple effect that would look at home on a Miami Vice extra. They’re a replacement for an Art Deco revival-style pair Gelber got from her grandmother, which recently broke, and Gelber likes that they are bold while being “easy to style.”

[Editor’s note: These studs are currently sold out, but you can sign up to be notified when they’re back in stock.] 

I heard about Valerie Madison’s Pearl Squiggle Studs from a jewelry collector named Xarissa, who goes by the handle @jewelboxing online. The squiggle looks almost like it’s wriggling on the ear, and she likes wearing them in a second piercing, as they are small but not tiny, so “you get a lot of ‘look.’” And “they’re just interesting enough to make people take a second look,” she says. The 14-karat solid-gold earrings come with a pearl, emerald, or sapphire on one end of the swirl and a diamond on the other. “Just be aware of the stone you pick if you’re hard on your jewelry,” she warns, as you shouldn’t shower with a pearl, while a more “durable stone like a sapphire will be fine for basically anything.”

The egg shape is a signature motif for designer Sophie Buhai, and it’s featured in the tiniest form on these studs. They hang low on the lobe, according to Fran Miller, founder of F. Miller, “creating a teardrop.” The size — small and light on the ears — makes for a good not-too-dainty everyday earring. “I pretty much wear them daily,” says Miller, who bought them several months ago and rarely takes them off. “I don’t really remove my studs so, for me, the perfect earring is one I can sleep in comfortably,” she explains. These are available in sterling silver ($350 per pair) and vermeil ($425 per pair), and Miller says the gold on hers has held up well so far.

Korn describes Susan Alexandra’s Flora studs as “spring incarnate.” They are meant to be miniature daisies, made from three shades of cubic zirconia — pink for the pistil, clear for the petals, and green for the stems — along with 14-karat white gold. You can turn them so the stem crawls up the ear like a true vine, or leave the stems dangling, and Korn likes to wear them right at winter’s end: “I think of them as the changing of seasons for your ears,” she says.

“I’ve been buying Jennifer Meyer’s jewelry ever since she was just ‘the woman who was Tobey Maguire’s wife,’” Selinger says. These days, you’ll see the longtime loyalist in the label’s turquoise studs, which feature a bezel setting and 18-karat yellow gold. The understated, comfortable, go-with-everything style is ideal for everyday wear. (Meyer makes the earrings in lapis and opal as well.)

These Anna Sheffield studs are a favorite of Fabiana Faria, co-founder of Coming Soon, who received them as a “getting-married gift” from wife Helena Barquet. “You get to set it and forget it,” Faria explains. “You won’t want to change it.” Sold as either a single (for $350) or a pair (for $700), the earrings have an emerald in the middle surrounded by champagne diamonds set in recycled 14-karat yellow or rose gold. The pair is an “investment that you won’t tire of,” Faria says. “If you wear it every day, you might as well splurge on it.”

It wasn’t until moving to Los Angeles that Fanny Singer, founder of Permanent Collection and co-author of the Green Spoon newsletter, found out about “local treasure” Kathryn Bentley, who’s most-known for making custom pieces. But Singer fell for the ready-made Dot Studs. These are “the perfect little rounds,” set in 14-karat gold, and Singer’s feature green sapphires. (You can choose yellow, orange, blue, or pink sapphires too.) “The color of the sapphires is mercurial and beautiful and changes in different lights,” Singer says. She wears the two studs in one ear — she has three piercings in each — scattering in “some other little sold gold bits and bars” as well.

You probably haven’t seen turquoise quite like this before: powdery blue, sourced from a mine in Kazakhstan. “The color is called ‘lavender turquoise’ — who could resist a stone with that name?” Singer says. Tiles of the turquoise and gold make for a pinwheel pattern that’s “a little evocative of the design of Ray and Charles Eames.” The earrings cost $520 a pair in ten-karat yellow gold or rose gold, or $720 a pair in 18-karat yellow gold or rose gold. And though “they play nice with other studs,” these are a statement in themselves. (They are also available in a traditional Kingman turquoise.)

Antiques dealer Erica Weiner rarely wears contemporary jewelers (excluding her own originals, of course), but makes an exception for Polly Wales. The jeweler is famous for her “perfectly imperfect” style and uses what she calls a cast-not-set technique — where gemstones are placed right into molten gold — seen here with sapphires looking “like shiny dinosaur bones poking out of the earth,” according to Weiner. “No one else is doing this, or doing it well, because it’s a pain-in-the-ass process,” Weiner adds. Each earring is an objet d’art in itself and one-of-a-kind down to the placement and color of the stones. So while these are on the splurge side, you’re getting a real one-off. “As a person who makes jewelry, and who sees a lot of the same styles over and over again, I was thrilled to see someone doing something truly unique,” Weiner explains.

Weiner owns a number of studs from Wwake, including the Column studs that combine brilliant-cut and baguette-cut diamonds. The brand’s earrings are sold as a single ($465) or in a pair ($930), and the label was one of the first to offer curated mix-and-match “pairings,” according to Weiner. These studs feature 14-karat recycled solid gold, as does most of the brand’s collection. Weiner likes that the designs are a little less “dainty” and more “painterly,” toeing “the line between architectural, mathematically precise geometry and riotous organic forms with shimmying chains and lumpy pearls.”