For the next installment of our birthstone series, the September birthstone, sapphire!

Accessorizing, especially wearing jewelry is crucial for a professional image. Luckily, whether you prefer fine jewelry or costume jewelry, there are many beautiful choices to enhance your look and help you feel pulled together. If you prefer fine jewelry, wearing your birthstone can be a lot of fun in addition to being powerful.

Sapphire is an easy gemstone to wear for professional dress, because navy is a common neutral color for suiting, and in general lots of people like blue. Truly, a blue sapphire (more on that coming up,) can be worn with just about any other shade of blue, creating a pulled together, cohesive, monochromatic color scheme.

Another thing to note is that I always recommend wearing sparkly (or subtly sparkling) earrings in your eye color to draw attention to your face and keep it there. Traditional sapphires are complementary for women with medium, bright or dark blue eyes. This is especially good news for us blue eyed women, as we are told that shades of brown eyeshadow (yawn) are better than other colors. Off topic for just a minute…brown is orange with black added to it; therefore, it’s the complementary color to blue and really brings out blue eyes.

As, I mentioned a moment ago, blue is the favorite color of 50% of all people, men and women alike. It has strong non-verbal, psychological implications.

We associate this color to the feelings of friendship and loyalty, sympathy and harmony, and also to love and longing. Sapphires symbolize nobility, truth, sincerity, and faithfulness. Clearly these are all important traits (well maybe not the loving and long,) for business.

If you’re someone who doesn’t change their jewelry much and/or sapphire is your birthstone and you’ve invested heavily in it, it’s a great stone to wear every day. Embrace it, make it your own. It doesn’t matter what other colors you’re wearing. The jewelry is part of you! (I will admit, if you wear a lot of pastels, you might want to look into one of the lighter colored sapphires.)

My advice for wearing this birthstone is very similar to what I said for the diamond. The key to wearing them in the office is to keep the bling to a minimum. Dripping in diamonds may send out a message that you’re too precious to get the job done. “Understated” is a good word to remember.

Sapphires come in just about every color of the rainbow, except red (ruby), but blue is the color mostly used as the birthstone for September. It has excellent hardness, excellent luster, and excellent durability, so it’s an excellent choice for daily wear. The only harder natural gemstone is Diamond. Sapphire still may be vulnerable to chipping and abrading if handled roughly.

The preferred blue in a Sapphire is cornflower blue, or Kashmir and natural colored Sapphires are highly prized.

Like most other jewels, sapphires are available in a variety of quality levels, and many Sapphires are lab created, so be careful where you’re purchasing, as these gemstones have the same properties of their natural counterparts and are difficult for many to identify. And if you are in the market for sapphires or other jewelry, I highly recommend local jewelry designer, Kelle Graham of Rocky Mountain Jewelers.