"Forget-Me-Not"

“Forget-Me-Not”

with Tous (Harper’s Bazaar Spain- June 2012)

I was about 12 years old when I first owned a piece of jewelry from Tous. I’d wanted a little silver pendant from the brand for ages, & will never forget the day my mother gave it to me for my birthday (I still have it, & wear it all the time).

For the past couple of years, I’ve become more & more interested in silver jewelry. Especially when it comes to rings. The thought of creating my own little pieces of jewelry had become more & more appetizing.

Thats why, when Tous first approached me & asked me to design a piece of jewelry, I was over the moon. I was excited & nervous, and didn’t really know how or what I wanted. I had lots of different themes & ideas, so it was no surprise that it took me ages to decide on what I was going to “create”.

My first idea was to design a skull ring. I own a lot of skull rings, so it would be cool to design one myself. The problem is, I wanted something that would fit my style, but also fit the style of the brand. Skull rings are great, but if I was lucky enough to have a piece of my own, I wanted it to have more of a story: design something I would like to wear, but also give to my closest friends & family.

That is when I looked down at my hands, & stared at the first ring I ever owned. As a little girl, I was obsessed with turquoise (there were days I’d show up to school dressed head to bottom in turquoise blue). If I remember correctly, this obsession started when I was playing dress-up in my grandmother’s house. She showed me some of her jewelry, & I immediately fell in love with a silver ring with a turquoise in the center. My grandmother gave me the ring when I turned 14, and I’ve been wearing it for years.

I wanted the ring to be silver & turquoise, inspired in the ring my grandmother gave me. Now all I needed was to figure out what exactly would be silver & turquoise.

Forget-me-nots are my favorite flowers. More than for the shape, I like them because of the meaning behind them. Soldiers used to give them to their wives / lovers / girlfriends before they would go to war, & these women would wear them all of the time to show they still remembered their loved ones, even when they were far away.

After sketches & sketches, tons of emails, phone calls & prototypes…here is my little silver Forget-Me-Not. I thought it would make a good gift. Something men could give their ladies, mothers could give their daughters, friends could give their friends, & grandmothers could give their granddaughters.

The process has been amazing, It has been such an honor, and I have loved every single minute of it. It was been lovely to work with the Tous family: both with Rosa & her amazing daughter.

I had to keep the ring a secret until last week, when Harper’s Bazaar Spain published the editorial we shot last month, with pictures & information about the design, & my day in Manresa at the Tous headquarters.