Pamela Love Is More Than Downtown

First the downtown It girls couldn’t get enough of Pamela Love’s jewelry. Soon the CFDA took notice, bestowing a Swarovski Award nomination for Accessory Design in 2011. Love remains humble, grounded, and cool: she still handcrafts her pieces in her own studio. Her Fall 2012 collection, presented today at Milk Studios, demonstrated why: just when you think Love might zig off to goth, she zags over to Art Deco by way of the Industrial Revolution. Her gorgeous silver and bronze woven cuff bracelets, necklaces, and earrings were studded with turquoise and jasper stones, with the surprise pop of Wonder Woman-esque winged armament, wowing Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Becka Diamond and the rest of the jam-packed crowd. We chatted with Love, who was wearing a full-length print halter gown from Mara Hoffman, after the presentation.

 

LORRAINE CWELICH: The silver and turquoise remind me of Taos, although with a modern architectural twist. Have you ever lived there?

 

PAMELA LOVE: I’ve spent time in Taos, but never lived there. I’m from Florida! Turquoise was also used very heavily in the Art Deco movement, as well as coral and malachite. So we tried to stay true to those colors.

 

CWELICH: What was your primary inspiration this season?

 

LOVE: The Art Deco movement, architecture from that period and sort of the industrial aesthetic from that period. Art Deco meets tribal kind of thing.

 

CWELICH: Did you also design the leather vests worn by the models?

 

LOVE: The leather vests are work vests, supposed to look like factory workers. They’re actually the vests we use in the studio when we make jewelry.

 

CWELICH: What was the intersection between the clothes and jewelry?

 

LOVE: I almost wanted it to look like they made the jewelry and then they stole it and threw it on!

 

CWELICH: Are you interested in future collaborations with designers?

 

LOVE: I’m always interested in collaborating with designers. I love Gaultier. I know that’s kind of a high hope!

 

CWELICH: How significant was the CFDA nomination for you?

 

LOVE: To have the support of CFDA was incredible and such an honor.

 

CWELICH: What do you most enjoy about creating your pieces?

 

LOVE: Seeing my ideas come to reality. Seeing how happy it makes other people to wear them. Seeing them on other people makes me the happiest.

 

CWELICH: Why do you think your designs are so popular downtown?

 

LOVE: They are edgier. I design for myself and my friends.

 

CWELICH: Since studying film at NYU, do you think you will ever make a film some day?

 

LOVE: I might do a film someday for the collection. I love designing sets and creating environments, in film school and for my own presentations. I love telling stories.

 

CWELICH: What story are you telling this season?

 

LOVE: This season is a little more scattered. It’s the story of the past, the beginning of an industry, the women from that time, the birth of the factories from the 1910s–1930s.

 

CWELICH: What music, films, books are currently influencing you?

 

LOVE: I’m listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven’t been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven’t been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry!