STORY SHIRLEY MOSKOW From the beads and pasta she used to string as a child, Arianna Brambilla has come a long way in expressing herself through stunning contemporary jewellery for the woman who dares. WHEN she was a little girl, Arianna Brambilla would often stare at her mother's jewellery box. "Opening it meant opening a dream. Everything was so beautiful and precious that I was scared to touch it."To satisfy her desire for jewellery, she made her own necklaces by stringing pasta.
As Arianna grew up, she cultivated her appreciation for beautiful and precious things. She studied at the Arts High School, then received her degree in industrial design from the Politecnico di Milano, where she majored in automobile design for five years.
Now, as head designer for Leader Line, one of Italy's premier jewellers, her talented touch transforms the Earth's raw treasures into splendidly crafted contemporary jewellery.
Each necklace, ring or bracelet the 26-year-old artist designs is as distinctive as the woman who will wear it. Working on a new piece, she says, "I think of the Leader Line woman as dynamic, fashionable, between 30 and 40, and ready to spend to spoil herself in little gifts. And, especially, this is a woman who is not in search of the classic." Rather, the woman she designs for seeks the unusual. She likes to be noticed.
"Jewellery as an ornament expresses the personal identity of the woman who wears it," says Arianna. In a market that offers everything, therefore, she advises men who are buying jewels for a woman to be a bit more daring. Instead of settling for the classic, she says, "I suggest that men aim for a unique piece, something that is personal and makes the woman who will wear it feel unique."
Individuality is the concept that guides her designs. For some reason, she finds herself "instinctively" beginning each new line with a pendant. Her best known series of pendants is constructed around a Murano glass pearl entwined with various materials. The one-of-a-kind pieces differ from each other in colour combinations and materials.
She describes her Murano glass pendants as "very colourful and fashionable, reminiscent of the Venice Carnival, but modern." While she was "giving life to them," she adds, "I imagined a different woman for each pendant." By the time she finished the project, she so identified with the collection that she named it perla d'Arianna - Arianna's pearl.
Her personal preference in jewellery runs to big and expressive rings. "But it's a difficult choice," she says. She also likes necklaces. "Whenever I finish an item, I am sure it is my favourite, until I finish my next one, and then I go through the same feeling." She says, "I love each one of my pieces. I find myself in each one."
One of her first professional assignments was to create a wedding band. Arianna saw it as a challenge. "I had to give personality to a traditional item that everybody owns, yet make it unique for the couple." She admits that she had no idea how to conceptualise such a ring. But it turned out that she was better prepared than she thought. While at first it might seem that automobile design has little in common with jewellery design, her team came up with a mechanical solution that met the challenge.
The resulting design comprised four rings - an internal and an external band each for the bride and bridegroom. A secret love message was inscribed on the internal rings, and the message then sealed inside with the external rings. "The name 421 stands for four rings, two hearts, one love." It is a romantic contemporary emblem.
Based in Milan, the hub of contemporary design, Arianna stays alert to new trends. For her, being in fashion in the jewellery world means being ready to dare with big sizes, strong colours, and unusual combinations of materials, what she calls "the poor with the rich", strong contrasts between precious and mundane materials. Her jewellery shows off beautiful gemstones by combining them not only with gold, but also with rubber, leather, silk rope, porcelain, silver and steel.
The "material is the flesh of the item and influences the design," she says. "It also has contact with the wearer's body." She sees a trend in urban jewellery toward cold materials, metallic finishes that are altered by technology so that they are oxidised. Popular colours are copper, grey, steel, black and white contrasts.
Her favourite metal is gold - red gold - and favourite stones are rough diamonds and blue amber.However, she says, "As a designer, I am extremely curious and fascinated by the unknown and the new."
"The discovery of new materials creates in me new passions," she adds. "Not long ago I discovered the larimar stone, lacrima del mare, or 'tear of the sea', and I fell in love with the stone and its name." Discovered only about 30 years ago, larimar is a rare form of pectolite, unique to the Dominican Republic, coloured in the blues of the Caribbean waters.
Shape is important, too. She favours "unfocused contours" that remind her of fog and clouds. Indeed, she often finds inspiration in nature - the textures of trees, the patterns of wheat and fresh worked land.
Jewellery fascinates Arianna not only as a fashion statement, but because it "accompanies important moments in our social and personal life. It also seals the initiatory rites of society."
These timeless messages find expression in Arianna's jewellery designs. Although the materials of Arianna's art are now more precious than the beads and pasta she used to string as a child, her attitude about jewellery has not changed. Inside the gifted designer resides a little girl who made her own necklaces "to wear and to attract attention by saying that I created them!" S
