Thurs 27th Aug: Rachel Gilman

When I had my first meeting with boutique owner Nathalie Kabiri, she was wearing a captivating pair of geometric hand painted earrings that I later discovered are from the store's repertoire of rad jewellery. I fell in love with this designer and was terrifically chuffed to be put in a display cabinet next to this line. They must have sensed our joint passion for all things angular and colourful.............which has since brought about us making contact ftom all the 100 designers stocked. Not only do we share a similar aesthetic but I have discovered that Rachel also got into making jewellery firstly as one-off pieces for shoots she was styling..............

Me doing jewelry was an absolute last minute fluke. I was going to style a shoot for Missbehave magazine and I wanted to have crazy large earrings, unique things as everyone borrows the same things for shoots, so i wanted to personalize my fashion stories.... I found materials and paint and glue and was excited about what came about. This was about two years ago. I am a full time first assistant to stylist Aleksandra Woroniecka so the only time I have to play with jewelry making is at night. I like to paint and craft to scary movies, especially from the 80's like Fright Night, Sleepaway Camp, They Live and whatever ghost hunting paranormal show is on the Science Fiction channel.

Rachel is from the USA and went to F.I.T. in NYC to study fashion design but didn't enjoy it as apparently she couldn't sew well and would get "stress stomach aches from being overwhelmed". That's a familiar story! Although she confesses to not having patience for intricate detailed work, I think that's not actually the case as they are so dinky and cute! More recently she has started to play with metallics and different materials such as chains in combination with the wood pieces. So where does her inspiration come from?


My parents raised me around Native American art, Kachina dolls and paintings of sunsets so those have served to be great inspiration. ...We have pink wood benches with cactus painted on them and a life size wood sculpture of a cowboy named Slim in my parents house. Their sense of whimsy and taste in art is what guided me.



Above are Rachel's own snaps of earrings inspired by folk art entitled "Southwest" and "Santa Fe". There is also an editorial scan of her earrings in Numero and an unpublished shots of Aggy wearing her earrings. There is also one of my snaps of how Rachel's collection looks at KABIRI...............who have relaunched their website today so anyone can order a pair ..........anywhere............go click and check out the new look site.............



http://www.kabiri.co.uk/
http://www.rachelgilmannyc.blogspot.com/
http://www.rachel-gilman.com/