I’m more than a little in love with this Mark Walsh and Leslie Chin for Rodarte copper cuff (oh, how I love their work). I’ve been really liking bronze-y colors since last year, when I worked with bronze for the first time. I’ve wanted a cuff like this forever, and I’ve never seen a piece of (alleged) amethyst like this in my life (and I have seen a LOT of gems in my life). Regardless, I love the oil-slick colors and the hammered copper. Over the years, I’ve grown to love larger and larger jewelry. It’s been a while since I acquired a really great piece of jewelry, hopefully I’ll find myself something great soon.

Happy holidays!
Soundtrack of the day: Baby Can’t Stop by Lindstrom, remixed by Aeroplane

xx,
Lauren

A few weeks ago, my parents had a party for their 25th anniversary, which was a great excuse for me to wear a fancy dress (I don’t go to many dressed-up events) and borrow my mom’s gorgeous emerald suite necklace. I actually had a hard time deciding between the emerald suite or this amazing morganite and colored sapphire pendant. It’s huge, over 60 carats, which makes it super heavy, but I decided to go with the emeralds. It’s one of the nicest pieces in my parents’ collection, and it’s got the most amazing green, not at all watery or cloudy like a lot of the emeralds you see. It was a fun time, especially since one of my best friends, Blair, came with me, and we had a good time getting away from regular grungy college life.

Wearing: Alexander Wang dress, emerald suite necklace and ring, diamond earrings

So sorry for the long absence and down time! I’ve been having annoying server issues, and just got the problems all sorted out. I feel terrible about my flakiness. In the meantime, I’ve been inspired by lots of the various Fashion Week shows, gotten the already-ubiquitous Christopher Kane crocodile dress (the grommeted leggings were sold out in my size…curses), and have been going through a lot of turmoil regarding which pieces from Opening Ceremony’s great Where the Wild Things Are collection. Right now I’m wrestling with whether or not to get one of the amazing Pamela Love jewelry pieces. I’ve got my eye on the awesome bangles, and I’m wondering whether or not to get the awesome horn headband. I’d absolutely love to wear horns all the time, but I had sort of wanted silver horns instead of the plastic ones on said headband. In any case, the whole collection is great, and the anticipation for the movie is getting to be too much to bear. October 16th, get here already!

I’ve been getting more and more excited for the release of Where the Wild Things Are, and it seems like a lot of the fashion world is also. Sometimes, I wish I could create myself a world full of monsters to escape real life. In EBF, we have a huge Where the Wild Things Are painting hanging over the fireplace, and it’s one of my favorite things in the house. In any case, I’m extremely excited for Opening Ceremony’s faux furs and Pamela Love jewelry inspired by the movie, almost as excited as I am for the movie itself (figures…). Today, I decided to take a little inspiration from the movie. It was more difficult than I imagined because it’s waaaay too hot to wear furry things (it was too hot to even wear a long-sleeved shirt.), and I don’t exactly have many brown tones in my wardrobe. But, if there’s anything in the world right now that would make me want to wear brown, it’s Where the Wild Things Are, so I threw together a black/brown/white outfit. I’m not sure it really captured what I was trying to get at, but it’s a start. I’ve got a sort of animal-ish printed skirt, which I went a little too scissor-happy on, one of my many feather headbands, and my super fun but ridiculously painful Christian Louboutin fringe boots (seriously, they’re treacherous.). Anyway, I neeeeed this horned leather bracelet/headband by Pamela Love. I will definitely be attempting to procure this in the near future:

Until the movie comes out on Oct. 16th, the best I can do is take inspiration from it, and I’m actually looking forward to wearing more brown (I very, verrryyyy rarely wear brown, this is definitely a first for me).

Soundtrack of the day: This Sweet Love (Prins Thomas Sneaky Edit) by James Yuill
Wearing: Imitation shirt, Urban Outfitters necklace, vintage skirt, handmade feather headband, Christian Louboutin fringe boots

Hugs,
Lauren

So I don’t think I ever explained “the jewelry thing” of mine, I’ve sort of just alluded to it without a good explanation, which is terrible of me. Sorry! So, let me explain my relationship with jewelry.
I love jewelry. No, I LOVE jewelry, but this was not always the case. When I was but a wee middle schooler (cue grey pleated skirt, blazer, and tie), my parents decided they loved jewelry, too. So slowly, they began to learn more about gems and jewelry, aided by our amazing and kind jeweler, Ken. It started out with a new wedding ring for my mom, with the most amazing white gold basket and an absolutely breathtaking diamond. To this day, I’ve never seen a wedding ring I like more than my mom’s. I remember holding it for the first time, and it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. It’s simple, elegant, but unique, with a crisscrossing pronged basket that is absolutely amazing. Tiffany’s has NOTHING on this ring. In the process of making this ring, my parents, actually my dad, to be exact, learned pretty much everything there is to learn about diamonds, and of course, I learned it all, too. I know the categorization of diamonds as well as my ABC’s, from color quality, to cuts (hearts and arrows for life!…or asscher. I like a good asscher cut), to inclusions. My parents even got me a beautiful Hearts on Fire diamond pendant.

But we didn’t stop at diamonds. My parents (and I) had discovered a passion for fine jewelry, and we wanted to learn everything there was to learn about it. That’s when our obsession with colored stones began, and suddenly, diamonds seemed almost boring next to the incredible variety of colored stones. My parents began going to the biggest gem and jewelry trade shows in Tucson and Las Vegas every year, and Ken brought me along to learn the business. I sketched out a design for a sapphire necklace for my mom. I learned how to judge the colors of everything from rubies to sapphires to opals to paraibas, how to price emeralds and judge the quality of cabochons. I discovered that I have an eye for spotting inclusions (little cracks in stones), much to the bewilderment of some of the dealers. I could tell a Kashmir blue sapphire from a Ceylon one. I was by far the youngest person at these industry-only trade shows, a 15-year-old navigating convention centers for 10 hours a day with people 20 years older than me.

Then, I started making my own jewelry, cobbled together crudely from semi-precious stones I sourced at shows. Ken sent me to jewelry school, but, as a high school student, I didn’t have much time, so I only took a couple classes. But I kept making jewelry, and I kept going to Tucson every year. I’d make my friends amethyst and coral and mexican fire opal earrings for their birthdays, and I obsessively saved anything that could possibly be used to make jewelry. I regularly attacked my own jewelry box, taking apart old things I didn’t wear anymore and making them into something to wear that very same day to school. A lot of people walk by the windows of Tiffany’s and marvel at the jewels, I shake my head sadly at the pinkness of their rubies and the milkiness of their emeralds, and know exactly how much they’re overcharging for their name.

I rarely make jewelry these days, although I’m hoping to start up again. This past year, I took a casting class and turned out a few rings and things, most of which I’ve already lost (I tend to lose my handmade jewelry, as do my friends, it seems. It’s terrible, but nothing lasts forever, I guess). I rarely talk about how much I actually know about and love jewelry, but I actually liked it even before I liked fashion, and I admire great jewelry design perhaps even more than great clothing design, because I know firsthand what it’s like to toil over a ringform and break sawblades trying to make a pair of earrings. It’s funny, because I own relatively little jewelry for how much I love it, but that may be because I’ve always had trouble buying jewelry, because there was always a voice in my head that would say, “why couldn’t you just make that?”

So, there you go. My jewelry past, which is quite unusual, I suppose, but it got me where I am today (I wrote my college essay about jewelry).

Everyone’s been in a tizzy for Pamela Love’s cast skull and talon jewelry, and I do really like her work (I’d been meaning to cast bird skulls into necklaces for a while, but she popularized it before I had a chance to. Laziness is so bad.), so I’m excited to hear that she’s working on a lower-priced line. I always have a slight aversion to buying jewelry, since I spent so many years only buying jewelry from trade shows or just making it. She says she wants to make “different pieces but [with a] similar feel”, which I think is great. There’s so much cool jewelry out there, but not very much great jewelry at lower price points. So often, I find that cheaper jewelry is just badly designed, and just doesn’t look as good, but I know that great design doesn’t have to be expensive, so I’m looking forward to what Pamela Love dreams up for her more affordable pieces.