Amy Powney, the creative director of British fashion label Mother Of Pearl belongs to club of fashion designers who have been making sustainable fashion part of her brand’s DNA even before the genre became, well, fashionable.
Raised in a household known for its respect of the environment – the family used a wind turbine for power and only watched TV when it was windy – Powney’s has turned the 20-year-old label into a truly circular fashion business (read: tapping into ethical supply chains, using textiles that minimise harm to the Earth and more).
This month, Mother Of Pearl is teaming up with fellow eco-warrior, jewellery brand Monica Vinader, to spread the word on sustainable design. The Norfolk-based jewellery label is known for its organic shapes and vermeil designs (a.k.a. sterling silver coated in precious gold) and its sustainable lifetime repair service.
The moodboard for the Monica Vinader x Mother Of Pearl collection is filled with images of “beauty in unexpected places” such as the tangle of roots beneath a tree.
Together, the two brands have launched a 12-piece hand-crafted jewellery collection ($165 to $575) that aims to make a circular impact given how the jewellery industry is notorious for its carbon footprint. (Consider the report by the World Gold Council which stated how each tonne of gold produced in 2019 emitted 32,689 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere).
For their outing, Monica Vinader and Mother Of Pearl have created designs with 100 per cent recycled gold vermeil and natural pearls as an ode to natural beauty and the wabi-sabi philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection. Indeed, their inspiration included oyster shells worn out by the waves and broken pottery fixed using the Japanese craft of kintsugi.
“The result is a tactile collection with fluid lines in a satin finish, as if the pieces have come straight from our soil,” explains Monica Vinader, the chief executive of her namesake jewellery brand. Scroll on for a look at the pieces you can shop for in stores.