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San Mateo, CA—Go ahead: wear yellow and white together. Wear big earrings and big glasses. And for goodness’ sake, don’t think jewelry is only for dressing up!

That’s the word at Christensen & Rafferty Fine Jewelry, which will be hosting a special “Jewelry 101: How to Break All The Rules” event for customers later this month.

Coreen Gutierrez, a sales associate in the store, says customers often have these arcane and dated “jewelry rules” set in their minds, like never mixing a yellow and white metal, or that pearls and turquoise are “summer” gems.

“It’s really a matter of confidence. There are no rules anymore,” she says. “Who knows where people get these perceived rules? Maybe they heard it from their mothers or maybe they set it in their own mind, but we’re here to show them they can wear whatever jewelry works with their personality.”

For example, says Gutierrez, some petite women feel they shouldn’t wear big rings because of their height. Not so, she rebuts. “Colleen [Rafferty, one of the store’s owners] is petite and she loves big rings!”

But even Rafferty has her own rules to get over: she is always concerned that big earrings will compete with her eyeglasses—something Gutierrez says nobody else would even notice.

Gutierrez says one of the toughest “rules” customers find hard to break is the one that says not to wear grand jewelry during the day. Not so, she says—you can and should wear your jewelry any time of day. The event will feature some wardrobe styling both with jewels from the store’s upstairs salon, and clients’ own.

“When they RSVP, we’re telling them to bring in the pieces they’re concerned about,” says Gutierrez. Associates will work with both the customers’ own pieces and store pieces to show a variety of options for wearing them.

Each associate will have a particular topic to discuss, five in all. It’s part of the series of events the store holds once per quarter. Previous events have included trend presentations with personal styling, and restyling events to help women get real use from pieces they inherited, no longer wear, or just don’t like.

Jewelry 101 will be held February 22 from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. at Christensen & Rafferty’s salon in San Mateo.