A vermeil button to close your cardigan, a silver pin to stick in a t-shirt, a label without a price on it but in grand feu enamel or jasper that you hang on the belt loop or on a zip… Rather than the skin, Ana Xenia’s jewelry adorns the clothing. “I always liked the idea that we could adorn the silhouette, hang objects on it, like medieval chaplains attached to the belt,” explains the Greek-Romanian who emigrated to France at the age of 8. In 2022, after a career in prestigious houses – Hussein Chalayan, Balenciaga, Loewe… – his own brand, Axep, served as an experimental laboratory for his clothing ornaments.
Today, her explorations pushed further, Ana pearls. “The idea usually comes very quickly. The realization, less so. You have to find the right volume, the right curves, and ensure that the piece will hold well once slipped into a fabric, a loop or a hole. laughs this graduate of the French Fashion Institute, who has her work done in France.
She is not the only one who wanted to adorn the garment and make it the basis of a piece of jewelry. From young designers to the established houses of Place Vendôme, a wind of ornaments on textiles blows here and there, as superfluous as it is invigorating. Obviously, “none of this is new, reframes Paul Paradis, art historian and professor of jewelry history at the School of Jewelry Arts, in Paris. In addition to fibulae, which existed since the Bronze Age, the Renaissance established the sumptuous jewel worn on clothing by crowned heads as a demonstration of power. See the portraits of Henry VIII, whose doublet is covered with gold buttons. And don’t forget that, later, when receiving the Persian ambassador, [le 19 février 1715 à Versailles]Louis XIV wore a black coat so weighted with diamonds [l’équivalent de 125 millions de livres] that he had to change it after dinner. »
In 2024, jewelry buttons are reborn, for example, at Bleue Burnham. This 31-year-old London designer develops them to order, in silver or textured gold and set with sapphires, to be sewn onto a jacket or attached as a brooch. Other contemporary designers are taking up the belt, like the Israeli-Danish Orit Elhanati, who developed a jewelry belt with an angular vermeil buckle with the American brand Khaite.
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