Jewelry Designer Deborah Pagani on Her Career

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Jewelry Designer Deborah Pagani on Her Career

Jewelry Designer Deborah Pagani on Her Career

Deborah Pagani started her career styling hair in the late 90s and over the years, had incredible opportunities working with big names like John Sahag and Oribe. She shifted her career path in 2008 with a passion project: starting her own line of fine jewelry. Today, she has found a way to integrate her love of jewelry with her knowledge of hair. Her luxe hair accessory collection, Hair Objet, includes chic metal hairpins, elastics, and clips. In this interview, she discusses her career transition, how she’s moved on from producing large-scale collections to more limited-edition and customizable pieces, and her initiatives around sustainability.To get more news about unique jewelry online customization, you can visit jewelryhunt.net official website.

I really fell into hair by chance. I wanted to go to design school but was very into the NYC club scene. I needed a job that was creative and had a sense of extravagance to it. Working in hair was great for a while, but I still always had the design bug. I would make my own clothes and jewelry, which is what really caught my clients’ eyes. They started buying pieces from me, then so did my friends and family and I realized that jewelry design could be more than just a hobby. When I became pregnant with my daughter, I felt it was the perfect time to make the jump and start my own jewelry business.

I’ve always loved using pins to style my hair but could never find one that was as sturdy and secure as it was chic. I decided to take matters into my own hands and use my experience in both industries to create something that was sleek, luxurious, and that paired well with jewelry. I started developing samples in 2017, workshopping different concepts until I landed on the signature DP Pin which launched in 2019.

This is so hard! Right now, it has to be my Honey Bangle or the Pill Link necklace – both pieces have become like a second skin to me.

Women like Jackie O., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Grace Jones, and Anna May Wong are huge sources of inspiration for me. On the surface, they’re all very different, but they all exude a confidence that I want women to feel when they wear my jewelry. The designs also capture each of these women’s individual traits in some shape or form. Some pieces are eccentric, some are luxurious and excessive, but everything is timeless. I’m also very influenced by ‘80s excess and ‘90s minimalism.

Lots of weighty 18-karat gold. At least one Honey piece is in the rotation every day – I’ve recently been into stacking the diamond and pink sapphire signets.

I love diamonds, but the range of colors you can get from sapphires is incredible. I’ve been spending time looking for the right shades of sapphires in pink, lilac, and mint to use in Honey and Pill Link silhouettes.

The wholesale model for fine jewelry was getting more and more difficult. It was more about price points and numbers and less about design. Now, I create when I feel inspired to add something to the collection, or when a client approaches me for something bespoke. Working one-on-one with women was what I was used to in hair, and I’ve come full circle doing it again in designing pieces for clients. It’s a more intimate process, creating for one client at a time and really working with them to build their collections.

Clients will send me photos of pieces they have, and I give a few ideas of silhouettes that I think the stones could work well in. Sometimes they’ll see something I’ve designed on Instagram and they want to make a similar piece out of stones they have in old jewelry. I take the piece apart, have the stones cleaned and polished and we work together to come up with their dream piece, going back and forth with sketches and mocking up the design on CAD before putting it into production. It’s amazing to see what people discover when they go through their jewelry boxes and realize that the pieces they aren’t wearing can be transformed into something completely new and cool.

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