Jill Golden Goes to Seventies London (in her Mind)
Somehow, the journey began with a YouTube video of a lion.
You know the Christian the lion viral video? Well, that whole saga was the totally unexpected jumping-off point of what soon became Jill Golden’s obsession with London in the seventies—the fashion, homes, music, all of it. Turns out, her parents had visited the city during that period and dug up old travel slides from their time there, sealing the deal: She had to dedicate pieces of her glossy, easy-to-wear jewelry line Flutter to the era. Here’s what fueled the Jubilee collection—which includes her Of a Kind edition! —and how it came together.
Get a load of the Of a Kind edition Jill’s fascination inspired—a leather and gold bracelet. WHOA.
“1977 was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, which was a huge celebration. But it was also a time of economic distress, which coincided with—or maybe sparked—the punk-rock movement. Perhaps the pinnacle of punk was the Sex Pistols’s controversial song ‘God Save the Queen’ and their performance on the Thames just days before the Jubilee.”
“The rise of the punk-rock movement also extended into fashion, with Vivienne Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren, who was the manager of the Sex Pistols.“
“There was also a large presence by Biba in London at that time, with Barbara Hulanicki opening of her large department store—which had an Art Deco style—on Kensington High Street. I think all of these forces together made my collection a real mix of industrial and jeweled aesthetics, with colorful accents and a variety of materials and shapes.”
“The first piece I did was the Rendall necklace—it has a bit of an industrial-slash-vintage vibe. The lions on the ends are a nod to that original documentary that started the whole adventure.” (And those are her parents’ images in the background!)
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Rachel Gets Down with the Seventies
There are three feathered-hair stars who the designer keeps coming back to.
Nothing is definitively throwback about Rachel Nasvik’s line of sturdy leather handbags—there’s no fringe or macramé in sight—but the Brooklyn designer has a healthy appreciation for the days of the Lite-Brite and the leisure suit. “I was born in the seventies and have a much older sister, so I’ve always liked the aesthetic,” Rachel explains. Some of her references from that era are distinctly her own: “My parents are Norwegian, and all of our furniture was Scandinavian, before that was cool. It wasn’t even from that time, but the lines and shapes remind me of growing up,” she notes. Others are universal, though, like these three seventies women who matter to her today.
Sally Field: “She’s unbelievably cute. I saw Smokey and the Bandit not that long ago, and I was just completely taken with her.”
Bianca Jagger: “She was just cool. I mean, she was married to Mick Jagger, and she was therefore kind of a rock star. She could make jeans and an open, button-down shirt look amazing.”
Goldie Hawn: “The number one thing is her hair. Beyond that, she has a really nice smile, those lips, and good style. Private Benjamin, which is technically the eighties, is an example of her at her best.”
Take a peek at the little gray-on-gray purse Rachel created just for Of a Kind! Exciting stuff.
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Nina Brags About Her Mom
And justifiably so: The Beatles were among her mother’s fans.
Pieces from the duo’s spring collection hanging in Nina’s Fort Greene apartment-slash-studio.
Nina Egli of the Brooklyn- and Zurich-based line Toujours Toi Family Affairs fell into fashion without intention, but her mother and co-designer Kaya made her mark in the field years before, bringing hard-earned skills and some real hippie cred to their young company. Here, Nina shares her mom’s early work, which influences their creations today.
One of Kaya’s sketches from her Apple shop days, circa 1969.
“My mother went straight from high school to design school in Paris where she started dating a guy who was big into the textile industry in Marseilles. She moved there with him in the sixties. His parents had a cinema, so my mom and her boyfriend opened their first shop in the foyer of the theater—which is so cool. They had a mix of vintage and designer, and she had her own line there.
By then, my uncle was a soloist at the Royal Ballet in London, and he convinced my mom to move there. She ended up being hired by the Beatles for the Apple shop! Like, her work visa is signed by one of the Beatles. Her setup was downstairs. Jimi Hendrix or whoever would come in, and she would design him a shirt, a one-of-a-kind thing—she would draw it, and a seamstress would make it. There weren’t photos of everything then like there are now—she can’t say, ‘Here’s a picture of Brian Jones wearing these pants I made.’ But sometimes we’ll see footage on TV, and she’ll say, ‘I think I might have designed that.’
We take a lot from her archives, from what she did in the sixties and seventies. I’ll have a story in mind—an idea for lengths and for shapes—and we’ll say ‘Oh, maybe we can pull from ‘68 or ‘74.’ Eventually, she moved to Switzerland and did a whole line for this really cool store called Brasilia. She worked until I was born and didn’t design again until she launched Toujours Toi Family Affairs with me.”
Get a taste of the Egli aesthetic and score the tunic Toujours Toi Family Affairs made exclusively for Of a Kind right here.
