Best Friends Necklaces: 5 Picks Worth Buying Twice

This is the piece most people picture when they think of a friendship necklace: a sterling silver heart tag engraved with the Please Return to Tiffany & Co. New York lettering, hanging from a fine chain. It works as a shared design because it is plain enough to suit almost any taste and formal enough to wear to dinner, while still looking right with a T-shirt.

Buy two and you have a matched pair that will still look deliberate in ten years, which is more than can be said for most friendship jewellery. The trade-offs are cost — two of them is a real outlay — and the finish: polished sterling silver picks up fine scratches and tarnishes if it sits in a drawer, so it needs to be worn and occasionally polished.

Pandora's splitable heart is the one to choose when the necklace itself has to carry the meaning: the heart separates into two halves, so each friend wears one and the pair only reads properly when you are together. It is made in sterling silver, which puts it a step above plated high-street jewellery for daily wear.

It suits friends who like a bit of sentiment and do not mind answering questions about it. Worn alone, half a heart looks like a slightly odd pendant, so this is a piece for someone who sees the joke rather than someone who wants a classic silver heart.

Swarovski's Lifelong Heart pendant sets a heart motif in crystals on a rhodium-plated chain, which makes it the dressiest option on this list. It is the one to buy if the necklace is for a big birthday, a hen do or a night out, and you want something that catches the light across a table.

Rhodium plating keeps a bright white finish that resists tarnish better than raw silver, but crystals and plating both dislike perfume, hairspray and hairspray-adjacent nights out. Treat it as an evening piece and it will stay bright; wear it in the shower and it will not.

Missoma built its reputation on gold vermeil — a layer of gold over sterling silver — and its heart pendant is the version to buy if you both live in gold jewellery. The warm tone works with knitwear, white shirts and the rest of a layered stack, and it sits close to the collarbone rather than swinging about.

The honest caveat is that vermeil is not solid gold. The gold layer thins where the pendant rubs and where the clasp moves, so it will eventually look paler than the day you bought it. Keep it out of the shower, the pool and the gym and you will get years rather than months.

Kate Spade's heart pendant is plated fashion jewellery, which makes it the cheapest way into a matching pair and the sensible choice if you want to swap designs in a year or two without guilt. It is light on the neck, playful rather than precious, and easy to wear with jeans and a striped top.

The trade-off is longevity. Plated metal eventually loses its finish, especially at the clasp and the back of the pendant, and it is not a piece you will hand down. Buy it because you want the fun of matching now, not because you want an heirloom.