The Sustainable Making of Our AILI Edition
It takes all sorts of thoughtfulness to make this necklace magic.
Monica Ruzansky is quick to name-check nature as a constant source of inspo for her daintily cool jewelry line AILI, and her earth-friendly approach to production completely backs it up. That means using environmentally friendly sourcing and working with people who are caring and meticulous about what they do. “There’s a lot of damage and waste in this world,” she says. “I want to do my part to repair that.” Here’s all the goodness that went into her Of a Kind piece. —mattie kahn
“I try to use recycled metals whenever I can. You know, because every little bit helps. It is important to me to do my best to be environmentally friendly. Once a piece is finished, I recycle my scrap, either by melting it down or reusing it in a new piece. And here’s a trick: In the studio, I keep different little cups marked with the different gold karats for all the dust filings. Over time, you can get a good amount of gold dust. It’s so precious. You don’t want to waste a thing.”
“Sustainability factors into design as well. The triangle shape of this piece symbolizes equality and balance. I use a lot of triangles in my work. I just think it’s a powerful shape. For me, it means stability and strength.”
“I don’t do casting or setting myself. I hand that job over to the professionals! The setters that I work with are a sweet family that I met through my studio mates. They’ve been in business for years, and they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s special to be able to know the faces of the people that work with you. They’re your community. The rubies that they set and that are used for the edition come from Thailand and are cut in Bangkok, where the government oversees the cutting process in order to keep working conditions good and wages fair.”
This killer necklace is available now! Just 20 in the whole wide world.
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Of a Kind
Silver and gold have found a way to play nice in these dope Sia Taylor earrings. —erica
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Of a Kind
Screw sequins. Shakuhachi’s gold lamé track pants are where it’s at. —erica
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Four Things that Make Blanca Monrós Gómez’s Jewelry So Special
Hers is the stuff that you buy for life.
The slender bracelets and pared-down earrings that Blanca Monrós Gómez makes might be understated, but once you know her work’s identifying features, you’ll spot it all over the internets—and dedicate more headspace to pining for it than you’d like to admit. These are four of the things that make it so standout. —erica
Top of our Valentine lists: The tiny, gorgeous cognac diamond earrings that Blanca made exclusively for Of a Kind.
Rose-cut Stones
“I like working with rose-cuts because they are very shallow—they sit very low and work well for stacking. Large rose-cuts are really hard to find because there isn’t much of a demand for them. People traditionally want a really shiny diamond ring, and these are not as sparkly—you don’t get that blingy effect, which is what I like about them.”
Pave Settings
“A lot of pieces have channel settings or fake pave settings—they don’t call them fake, but they are cast to have prongs that hold the stones. For a real pave setting, you just have a plain bar of metal. With special tools, you make little holes and raise tiny beads of the metal. If you look really closely, you can see the little beads that hold the stones—it’s a very skilled job. When I started making my pieces, I was setting everything myself. Now I have a really good diamond setter in the city.”
Black and Gray Diamonds
“You didn’t see black diamonds much when I started using them, and gray diamonds are very rare—especially big ones. If you were looking for something like these 20 or 30 years ago, you could not find them because these were the discards. But I like that they’re not considered perfect—and that they’re opaque. I think they look really pretty if you mix them, the gray, white, and black—when they’re not matchy-matchy.”
Rose Gold
“Rose gold is my favorite metal. It blends in with almost every skin tone, kind of mimicking it. It almost disappears when you wear it, and I think that’s why men especially like it for wedding rings when they aren’t used to wearing jewelry.”
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Of a Kind
Denise Julia Reytan knows you. She gets that you’re going to use your phone to tell the time and that a watch is just for decoration. —erica
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Of a Kind
There is something so awesome—and threatening—about these gold studs from Caroline Ventura of Brvtvs (who made our sold-out Ides of March bracelet). They remind me of the creepy kids in horror movies—like the twins in The Shining or Esther in Orphan. —erica
