Two Met Gala newcomers took their first steps down the famous staircase last night: Pamela Anderson and Pandora. As the face of the jeweler’s 2023 Lab-Grown Diamonds campaign, Anderson paired her custom necklaces and brooch with a coordinating nude dress. Oscar de la Renta dress. Pandora launched lab-grown diamonds in 2022, but these pieces mark the debut of colored diamonds among the brand’s offerings.
Traditionally, when it comes to red carpet styling, the dress inspires the jewelry. But in the case of personalized jewelry And dress, the talent itself triggered the creative process. Pandora’s co-creative directors Francesco Terzo and Alessandro Filippo Ficarelli tapped into Anderson’s passion for the natural world, particularly his farm in British Columbia (photographed in his 2023 documentary, Pamela: a love story), as a starting point. In an email to In the stylethe designers wrote: “We took direct inspiration from Pamela and created the pieces around the idea of freshness, seeing Pamela as embodying a lightness akin to morning dew. »
Anderson’s jewelry suite (two long strands of diamonds draped around her shoulder and down her back, as well as a brooch pinned to her hip) was handcrafted in Providence, Rhode Island, just three hours north of the Met. The nation’s smallest state has a rich history as a jewelry manufacturing center, dating back to 1794. It still maintains a strong fine and costume jewelry manufacturing infrastructure and holds secret weapon status for many renowned jewelers .
The pieces were built from start to finish under the roof of a workshop that has been making jewelry for four decades. From design development to mold sculpting, the creation of the pieces at the facility happened in tandem with Terzo and Ficarelli. The technical construction went hand in hand with the aesthetic vision, ensuring the dream was realized with impeccable execution – no diamond pun intended. “Creating personalized pieces is like telling and sharing a story. We wanted to be distinctive and unique while staying true to our aesthetic,” the duo wrote. The diamond strands of the necklaces and the cascading diamonds of the brooch were meant to symbolize the dewdrops in Anderson’s garden.
Designing for the Met Gala was an invigorating challenge for the co-creative directors. “There is a theatrical element to the Met themes that adds a very interesting, fun layer of entertainment and allows for creative storytelling.” The pressure of themes in recent years has only fueled the fire of creativity. “The McQueen 2011 exhibition is undoubtedly our favorite, which we found very powerful and moving. Other favorites include Heavenly Bodies in 2018 and more recently Camp: Notes on Fashion in 2019.”
Once the designs were finalized, three-dimensional molds were constructed, then cast in a 24-karat white gold alloy, which was then polished and finally set with Pandora’s lab-grown diamonds. The process took approximately 380 hours from design to finished product. Nearly 200 carats of synthetic diamonds were used in the pieces which passed through the hands of 20 artisans in the workshop.
Ultimately, what do all these numbers mean? An unforgettable moment for these newcomers to the Met Gala.
News Source : www.instyle.com
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