Adam & Eve

What is your connection with Ksubi?

I was always good friends with Mikey and the boys and then I started working with them about 4 years ago. I was designing fashion for them, I had done some of my own stuff that they liked and so I just designed some clothes for their range back in 2003, for about a year. I had an accident before that and was sick and did not get to finish my studies, I was out for about a year and straight after that they asked me to work for them. They were so supportive. They also had a half pipe that you had to walk over to enter the main office.

An accident waiting to happen…

I remember I had a person from rehab who had to come in and check my work environment, it was quite funny.

While you were studying who else was around?

Michelle Jank, I knew her before studying though, and we have become quite close friends. She came to Paris and started living there whilst I was over there. She has been very important to me in many ways. In my year was Gregory Brooks, he works at Maison Martin Margiela, he is a close friend of mine and we were flatmates in Paris.

Do you retain a studio space in Paris for work?

No, I recently gave it up. I am off to New York for some projects next. I had been in Paris for 4 years, I would love to go back but I did find it difficult with the language as well. I wanted to be with my friends and family again and especially wanted to start doing my own thing. I basically needed more freedom to develop things. I was working full time in Paris for 3 of the 4 years.

How was your French?

Work was good. I was at Dior for the 3 years, starting as soon as I arrived. Everyone spoke to me in English, however I did have French lessons.

Your jewelry is stocked in London’s Dover Street Markets, how did that come about?

I don’t know really. I always kept in contact with the people there and they have always been supportive. They said keep in touch and that motivated me to get out there and do my own thing. In Paris it was difficult as there are big factories to make jewelry. To make something by hand was quite difficult and expensive. I spent about 6 months on my own trying to work it up and built up quite a dossier on my own of research that I had made and I was all ready to go with designs and so I came back here to Sydney and worked with a handmade jeweler, who did one of the pieces, for about 6 months.

I love your horse sculpture, were you inspired by Baroque art?

Maybe subconsciously because I really love the old antiques that came into Paris and Versailles and in the Louvre. They are old Roman and Greek sculptures and antiques, out of marble. I have always been drawn to those iconic sculptures. So when I was in Paris I was drawn to those.

You can really see the connection.

The last time I went to Versailles Jeff Koons was there. There was a self portrait that he had done in white marble, they had it in the Louis X IV room as if the sculpture had always been there. It was quite amazing. The technique that I used on that sculpture could not have been done in any other way. It has so many positive and negative spaces involved that if I had carved it nothing would have been so perfectly reflected. For about a year I was trying to figure out how it could be done. It's prototyped.

You mentioned that you like to use old school jewellery making techniques…

No I am more inspired by them, Etruscan jewelry, their use of gold and their intricacies. Also, Faberge, just the way that he used crystal and gold and the strong references to antique work. I want to push myself with this rapid prototyping, I want to create something that refers to now as well. Paris is amazing for its history, however I think that going to New York is so freshly modern. Paris is rich in art history and does not have the same forward movement.

What is going on in jewelry today?

Well, Solange Azagury Partridge, she used to be a designer at Boucheron, which is old school classical. She is based in London and does the most amazing high jewelry with diamonds and platinum, really forward thinking. I met her friend in Paris, he used to work for Cartier in the press office for years and is now a jewelry stylist. There is a part of Paris, place Vendome that has this jewelry history. It has Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Boucheron, Dior and all of these old houses. They are all together.

Your mum is an artist and your dad a musician?

Yes, Dad is a percussionist.