The frighteningly prolific design label Alex&Chloe has produced a stunning new line of dark metal jewelry called The Trinity Collection. The line is all about religious iconography, tweaked with their signature humour, and infused with a punk rock edge.
The label, which steadfastly refuses to shed its anonymity, has been building on its core jewelry line since they started in 2004. Their designs veer between abstract shapes in stark black and white acrylic, to laser etched shards of mirrored glass. The emphasis is on a wearable type of hipness on par with the work of Alexis Bittar. Their pieces have been featured in magazines like Vogue Hommes Japan, Vanity Fair, Nylon, and Interview. Their celebrity fan list is huge, ranging from Taylor Momsen to Lady Gaga.
They answered questions about their inspiration and process with characteristic aplomb.
tFS: Where are you from?
A&C: We are currently based in the Los Angeles area.
tFS: When did you start designing as Alex&Chloe?
A&C: We started our accessories collection in early 2004.
tFS: Why did you decide to go into jewelry design?
A&C: We’re inspired by so many things – magazines, movies, music, fashion, people, cultures, television. If we see or hear of something that catches our interest, we do a bit of research, collect more images and information, and design pieces that reference our current interests.
tFS: Do you have a particular type of customer in mind when you’re creating?
A&C: We definitely try to design everything to be wearable by all guys and girls. There are definitely some more ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ pieces but we love mixing it up. It’s Unisex.
tFS: Your collections vary widely in style and look. How do you decide what materials to use?
A&C: We started with acrylic pieces at first, and then we went into metals like sterling and oxidized sterling silver, 14k gold, and now inverted white and black diamonds. With the ‘inverted diamond’ pieces, we really wanted to work with diamonds, but we knew we didn’t want to look at it from a traditional standpoint. We wanted the ‘geometry’ of the diamond to show, so we inverted it on rings and pendants. It gives it a very new feeling and it looks a bit punk rock. We also knew right away that we wanted to pair white diamonds with oxidized/blackened silver so that the white diamonds would really shine. We found out that working with silver is not widely used when working with diamonds – it’s almost a jewelry no-no – especially blackening the silver! But we loved the idea, and we love the pieces that came from it.
We also recently watched a movie called Paris is Burning about the vogue-in dance movement in New York in the 80’s. There is also a CD that we loved awhile ago called Paris is Burning featuring a few Parisian Do’s – we thought it would be a fun idea to use our dripping effect on a piece playing with the ‘Paris is Burning’ theme, which is how we came up with our ‘PARIS IS BLEEDING’ piece.
tFS: What makes Alex&Chloe stand out?
A&C: Our goal is just to make beautiful objects. And we love designing pieces with a bit of humour – that is very important.
tFS: Is there a real Alex&Chloe? Or is it just a name?
A&C: We like to keep everyone guessing who Alex&Chloe actually are – we love the mystery, that’s part of the fun!
To view all collections, find out the latest news, and purchase jewelry or clothing, go to www.alexandchloe.com
Photos courtesy of Alex&Chloe.
