Gabrielle Greiss reinterprets the key lives of animals in jewelled type

When a trend assortment has good storytelling behind it, it’s normally a profitable one,’ says fashion-turned-jewellery designer Gabrielle Greiss (whose allegorical debut jewelry assortment we highlighted in 2024). ‘It’s not each season that you just discover a coherent story, as a result of plenty of occasions you’ve gotten concepts you want, however you don’t actually know what you need them to say. You want time. After which, generally, issues simply fall into place.’

It’s an evolution echoed in Munich-born, Normandy-based Greiss’ personal path. After a profession in trend – which noticed her working with Martine Sitbon, Sonia Rykiel and Alber Elbaz, adopted by an eight-year tenure at Chloé – Greiss took a pause, contemplating a change in path. ‘After I stopped working at Chloé, I needed to take a while for myself,’ she says. ‘I used to be doing loads of afternoon courses at Beaux-Arts de Paris, and sculpting was one thing that felt simpler for me than portray or drawing. I began to do animals – though, I’m not an animal particular person. I do have a cat now, however I didn’t select her. She simply moved in, so that you observe.’

In her sculpting work, Greiss was impressed by the figurative foundations of the fables of La Fontaine and Aesop. ‘I felt these fables are actually nearly easy behaviours that all of us have, and so they inform our simplest tales and interactions. They’re really fairly trendy and related and timeless. Then every little thing began to make sense for me, and I realised that this turns into identical to an illustration. And the fables have been illustrated in so many various methods. So why not put on them? And it’s good which you could know a narrative that you just put on, or you may have it only for aesthetic causes. So many issues simply got here collectively.’

Greiss created sculptures in wax that have been then forged in bronze in Paris. It shaped the premise of Fables Etcetera, her debut jewelry assortment, launched final March, which introduced the non secular world of the animals to life. In her second assortment, Schatzkammer, this menagerie is intertwined with Greiss’ recollections of childhood visits to Munich palace Residenz, the place Bavarian royal treasures are on show. Throughout these journeys, she was struck by the abundance of valuable stones, an opulence she attracts on in her new work.

Nonetheless enamoured by the key lifetime of animals – ‘I needed to maneuver on to one thing new, however imagining the adventures of animals, giving them human motives and feelings, saved drawing me again,’ she says – Greiss reinterpreted them in daring stones, giving the timelessness of Aesopian fables a painterly spin. In these new works, monkeys bedecked in onyx and pink moonstones be part of leopards in jasper, whereas peacocks flex tails of lapis lazuli, pyrite and labradorite. Elsewhere, a black onyx and tiger’s eye bear retains a watchful eye from a backyard of sunstone and ametrine. ‘I didn’t need to work with actually valuable stones as a result of I like when the jewelry nonetheless has just a little little bit of cool, and is just a little bit punk,’ says Greiss. ‘Utilizing stones was a brand new problem; there are such a lot of potentialities, and it could so simply get a bit valuable or ornamental, which I didn’t need.’