Quintessentially Dauphin

“I work around a concept. I have an idea that is almost abstract. I don’t replicate what I see,” explains designer Charlotte Dauphin de La Rochefoucauld of her eponymous jewelry line, Dauphin. “I try to formalize the idea with the materials,” she continues. “My designs are very often abstract or geometric.”

For her capsule collection with Dover Street Market, which launched earlier this month during New York Fashion Week, the French jeweler created six rings that play with the form of an open circle. Each ring comes in either white or black, using Dauphin’s signature materials: light-catching diamonds and gold (the black coloring is achieved by coating the white gold in black rhodium). The concept in mind was the passing of time. “I started to think about the visual representations for the idea of time,” she tells us. “I came up with the cycle, rain drops, the water.” It is, in Dauphin’s mind, a “natural evolution” from her label’s second collection (the label itself is only a year and a half old). “I’m reusing the same color palette…I already did this line of the open cut circle that is quintessential of my vision,” she adds. An installation of open circles on the ground floor of Dover Street Market New York echoes Dauphin’s designs.

That Dauphin chose an artistic career is no surprise. Her family is full of famous creatives, from her grandfather, the legendary advertiser Jacques Dauphin, to her relative by marriage Oscar de la Renta. It is her fine arts background, however, that most informs Dauphin’s designs. She is a keen sculptor and before becoming a designer, she studied dance, filmmaking, and art history. “I think all of these resonate with my work today,” she says. “I related jewelry to movement, to space.”

THE DAUPHIN X DOVER STREET MARKET CAPSULE COLLECTION IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT DOVER STREET MARKET NEW YORK. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT THE WEBSITES FOR DSM NY OR DAUPHIN.