A ring can have symbolic significance, and for many people rings have emotional and sentimental connotations. However, our research reveals that many professionals fail to understand the additional negative overtones that wearing rings can have.

rings on artist
Too many rings for a professional

The first thing to understand is that in the business world, women need to limit themselves to one ring per hand. That ring cannot be gaudy or overly ostentatious. An attorney, banker, financial executive, or manager doesn’t want to scare clients with suggestions of being a gypsy, ignorant, or a member of a secret cult–all of which are the unnatural associations that attach themselves to you if you wear too many rings or rings that are too unusual, flashy, or showy.

Professional men cannot wear any rings other than a single wedding band. They open themselves up to being subconsciously, or even consciously, perceived as incompetent, deviant, and out of the mainstream if they wear a college ring or any other type of ring.

I recommend that professionals read H.P. Lovecraft’s classic novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth to get a sense of what additional rings, or strange rings, can bring to mind. In that story the shambling inhabitants of the seaside town of Innsmouth are infected with a weird condition in which they become fishlike members of a queer and outlandish religion. Their high priests wear a tawdry tiara and other freakish jewelry, and they scare visitors to the town, including the narrator.

You don’t want to put negative ideas into a client’s mind. If you’re an attorney, you don’t want judges to think twice about your ethics. Bankers can’t risk having investors question their motives or even their sanity by wearing rings that speak volumes about potential unnatural connections, associations with mentally disturbed people, or membership in deviant cults. All of this can be avoided by following our suggestions for the number and types of rings you wear, which we outlined clearly above.

The one exception to these rules is if you’re an artist. Musicians, painters, and sculptors can bend the rules that apply to professionals. They can wear more rings, and rings that have a more jazzy and uncultured appearance. Artists can even risk appearing to be members of outré or unusual religions and sects. As you can see in the accompanying photograph, which was taken in February 2020 in Greenwich Village in New York City, a songwriter can get away with multiple rings on the same hand, even rings that are quite unusual and in questionable taste. But this does not mean that a lawyer or a banker can do the same! In fact, it would be foolhardy for a financial services professional to wear these kinds of rings, or indeed any kind of unusual jewelry.