by Jeta B
Listening to Laura Bicego talking about jewellery design at her booth in Baselworld is a delight in itself. It is as if she is talking about an extra limb, invisible to the ordinary eye. Born into a family of jewellers in Vicenza, Italy, Laura has been living and breathing jewellery all her life. A piece of jewellery is practically her extra limb.
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- Laura Bicego
Laura could talk you through the behind the scenes of the incredible craftsmanship required to produce exquisite pieces of her Trasformista collection. Instead, she talks about the luxury of female intuition and the power of jewellery as a form of communication from one strong woman to another. “Look at this, I don’t need a man to help me put it on,” she shows me the patterned design of the clasp made so single women can wear it. It was a new invention to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the perfect mistake.
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- Trasformista Bracelet 18 carat gold & diamonds
The clasp is really just the cherry on the cake. A simple twisting action of the bracelet turns it into a completely new design. The wearer can decide to show or hide the diamonds, to go simple or go glamorous. Moving jewellery may be a strong trend in the last year but for Laura it is old news. In 1993, three years after launching her brand Nanis, she made a mistake in the production of one of her cashmere pieces: it rolled out on the wrong side of the design. But it was a perfect mistake. It inspired Laura to explore the movement and design properly, coming up with her bestselling Trasformista line.
“My client is a woman with imagination and she wants her jewellery to be feminine but also playful and sexy.” Laura’s eyes sparkle as if she’s given me a secret code to the mystery of the Trasformista woman. Every bracelet comes in a box that opens into a mini screen, a video showing the client how to move it to get different designs. She coaches her sales people to twist the jewellery, and runs competitions to celebrate the fastest person to spin the bracelet into a new design. “From chiselling in my workshop of 30 people to the 400 sales points around the globe, the passion should be one and the same,” Laura explains.
With dealers in the US, Japan, Singapore,Thailand and expanding in the Middle East, Laura’s next step is making her jewellery accessible to young women who cannot afford the price tag of the Trasformista masterpiece. “I am working on something in the 600-1000 euros price range but that carries the design and the feeling of the original collection.”
Laura is on another mission to further transform her Trasformista collection. Looks like the Lady TransFormista will never stop?
