There’s a lot of jeweler’s jargon for gold — terms such as gold-plated, gold-filled, and solid gold can be confusing, even when you read the fine print. You might’ve also seen the word vermeil ...

At GQ Recommends, we pride ourselves on fielding fashion-related queries of of all shapes and sizes. But the difference between gold vermeil jewelry and its capital-G counterpart stumped us—at least ...