There’s an intuitive new designer in the crowded jewellery market. Voxfrock editor, Janice Breen Burns happened upon her at lunch
Susannah Fairley might have blended unremarkably into a room full of well-heeled women at a certain A-list luncheon recently, were it not for the lush stack of beaten gold and silver bangles clinking between her wrist and elbow. The jewellery looked right somehow, against her skin, was anything but flashy (later, she would describe it as “organic”) and so intriguing, I photographed it for my fashion files.
Susannah Fairley
The jewellery market is so confusingly crammed with copy-cat, mediocre and cheap-nasty collections these days, I recently started a catalogue of worthy exceptions. It’s not a long list yet: Julia De Ville, several collections under the umbrella of e.g.etal, and now Ms. Fairley’s eponymous brand, Fairley, less than three months old.
It’s her first commercial collection after years of dabbling in jewellery design since her teens. Last December Ms. Fairley switched professional gears, leaving a rich career of commercial jewellery buying and managing including a long stint for the Just Group‘s Jacqui E chain, to wing it with her own eponymous label. Her reasons were no more compelling than most (“I’ve always just loved beautiful things..”), but her contacts, industry nouse and knack for design were.
In a season, she appears to have nailed that tricky psycho-aesthetic blend of nostalgia, glint, beauty and modernism that is key to jewels looking “right” on a wrist, finger, throat or earlobe without ostentation or dateable detail. “I love the organic look,” she says, “Which is why I use earthy textures back with the semi precious stones; a kind of middle eastern aesthetic. It’s natural, but luxe; a natural progression of what you’re wearing.”
The bangles that caught my attention in that room full of designer women and technically finer jewels, were kinked and hammered gold and silver hoops about as thick as spagetti. Ms. Fairley had stacked them with a couple of tumbled stone bead bracelets, strung with Japanese hand-rolled silk and dangling with Roman coins. A feature bangle of gold, hammered into a hoop, had a thin pie-crust setting around a thumbnail-sized ruby. Her coins clicked against her bracelets and the whole geological section slid and rattled elegantly on her arm.
Ms Fairley explained she buys the stones on her travels to Brazil, India, Turkey and Indonesia. Her criteria are beauty, backstory, and what each stone can evoke. Technical clarity and commercial value are of little concern. “They’re not top quality,” she says. “Not like you’d buy in Hardy Brothers, but any stone I love, and love its colour; if I can price-point it, I’ll work with it.”
She ticks them off, all her favorites: kyanite, tanzanite, blue sapphire, coloured sapphire, ruby, emerald, green amethyst, brazilian amethyst, smoky quartz, citrine, lemon quartz, onyx, aventurine and, next season, lapiz lazulia. Each has a poignant reason for being. “There’s a lemon quartz that carries this gorgeous light, and tanzanite – not such a good commercial decision but – it has this incredible purple hue that kind of glows, like you’re looking into the middle of the universe. And there’s kyanite; deep blue layers with flicks of white; you just have to see it….”
Those 3rd century Roman coins are also frequent motifs in her work because they remind her of love and history. “My mum had a pair of coin earrings when I was little; I’ve always been obsessed. They’re ancient things that can be loved again.”
Ms. Fairley uses 18c gold plate and solid sterling without compromise, but manages to manouvre her end prices by careful sourcing and by manufacturing in Indonesia. She wants her jewels to appeal, by beauty and price, to what she describes as her “all generations” market. “They’re not faddy, they’re classically bohemian,” she says, struggling to capture her own broad summary; “They’re raw, luxe, elegant; they’re wearable by women 25 or 60 plus. I’ve found they appeal to all kinds of women….”
After a single season, she can already claim Megan Gale, actress Olivia Wilde, and Beverley Hills “Real Housewife” Gigi Hadad, among others, as converts to Fairley jewellery following a series of fortuitous social accidents. She met Miss Wilde, for instance, by a pool in Palm Springs. Megan Gale asked to see the collection when they got chatting in a Qantas lounge.
Celebrities are icing, but she considers her ordinary mortal market equally carefully. “I want to build my brand through stores, not online,” she says. She currently stocks a dozen outlets in Victoria and New South and reports “good talks” with US stockists. “It’s important to me that people can touch and feel the quality, see the stones.”
Online, it’s also difficult to see the glowing, purple centre of a tanzanite universe.
Fairley rings range from $350 to $495, bezel hammered 18c gold bangles $220, solid sterling $200, and the ruby bangle mentioned here, $550.
For stockists, www.lovefairley.com, susannah@lovefairley.com, www.facebook.com/lovefairley
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
