Wrap memories around your wrist with charm bracelets

Charm bracelets once served as jingle-jangle reminders to vote for John F. Kennedy.

Passed out to constituents, they dangled photos, busts or the names of John and Jacqueline Kennedy and their children, according to the book “Charmed Bracelets” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $19.95). Another carried a scroll with Kennedy’s call to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

As we’ve already witnessed this year, campaigns have lost that fairy-tale charm.

But charm bracelets are back, as big as they’ve been since the days of Kennedy’s Camelot.

From vintage kitschy versions to Tiffany’s ubiquitous sterling-silver icons, to designer incarnations fetching thousands of dollars, each manages to freeze a moment or two in a fast-paced time.

“It’s a scrapbook for your wrist,” said flea-market expert Barri Leiner of Chicago, who with Marie Moss has started an all-vintage jewelry collection called M&B Vintage. They can assemble bracelets immortalizing bridesmaids, babies, hobbies and trips.

“It’s an instant heirloom,” Leiner said, “and a wonderful collectible to pass down.”

Charm bracelets were the “archetypal accessory” of the 1950s, “Charmed Bracelets” author Tracey Zabar writes – perfect with the three-quarter “bracelet sleeves” of the decade.

In those days, the achievements of homemakers or husbands orbited some wrists – Lucille Ball’s bracelet celebrated Desi Arnaz’s musical career. Many parents bought bracelets at the birth of a daughter and attached a new charm each year. Teen bracelets swayed with Beatles idols, Betty Crocker accomplishments or “mad-money” boxes to stow a dollar in case a date went awry.

Then the feminist era began.

The golden age of charm bracelets was over.

Not only did these nostalgic baubles clash with fringed jackets and free love, Zabar writes, they created an occupational hazard in typewriter keys as women entered the workforce.

“Now, we’ve come full circle,” Zabar writes, venturing that a new generation craves irrevocably personal items in an impersonal world.

“Charm bracelets are hot again.”