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LA-based jewelry designer AZATURE offers up black diamonds and platinum for men and women with a unisex collection of wedding rings, NOIR, which ranges from $2,700-$20,400 and is now available via the label's online shop. We queried AZATURE about his modern approach to design and marriage, and how black is the new white for adventurous brides and grooms.
What is your approach in terms of creating unisex jewelry, and in particular the wedding rings?
AZATURE is engaging with the future, for the progression toward a unisex freedom of expression and embracing a welcoming concept of personhood. When I created AZATURE, my self-titled line of fine jewelry, I wanted to create something for every man, every woman, every age, every religion, every occupation, love for all. I design every collection by remembering this and looking into the future. I also ask my mother, "will you wear this, then it's in." I have a very cool mother... Many designers reference history as their source of inspiration, I like to say my biggest inspiration is the future because you can design the unimaginable. AZATURE is really about escaping judgment and having faith in the essential beauty of every person.
Do you find that women go for particular styles and men for others?
It's really interesting because men and women seem to like the same pieces in my collection. I use to have this theory while I was attending fashion design school at Parsons NYC, that a good design should be worn and appreciated by a man and a woman. I started to experiment this with AZATURE, and realized that the designs that are purchased by both men and women are my best designs.
Any styles that have done especially well for you?
I am extremely humbled and blessed by the response for my INDUSTRI and NOIR collections. But it seems to me that anything with black diamonds is what people gravitate towards. We seem to all have an obsession with diamonds, and white diamonds have a sense of old to them. The black diamond has a sense of new. One personal shopper that I work with coined me the nickname "king of black diamonds," because that's all her clientele ever wanted from my collections. It was at first a joke she made, now she uses it religiously.
"New Diamond for New Marriage"—what does it mean to you?
This is my new campaign that I will fully launch in a day or so and it is about the new bride, the new wedding, and the new groom. I have attended many weddings, and over the past couple of years I realized that brides were really thinking outside the box with everything. Over the years little by little I noticed changes in the dress, the locations, the hair, the attire, the flowers... I thought, wait, for the new marriage, a new diamond is what a bride should have. Black diamonds being so mysterious and research showing that they are out of space, it was love at first sight. Black diamonds fit perfectly into my greatest inspiration—the future. There have also been many developments in the concept of marriage. In California and other parts of the world same-sex couples can now get married, hence the concept of weddings, grooms, brides, are not what they used to be. Modern society has definitely changed and with these changes come AZATURE black diamonds.
· AZATURE [azature.com]