Lisa Watson for Profile magazine

For my final degree project I have been working with talented and innovative jewellery designer, Lisa Watson throughout the process of her exciting final collection here at The London College of Fashion. 


Photography: Claire Masters:Fashion LDN

'Containment' is a collection of conceptual jewellery pieces heavily influenced by the world of post-modernist design and aesthetics. With their geometric angles, mathematically proportioned measurements and pop-art  inspired palette you would be forgiven for thinking that the designs created by Lisa Watson were intended for a gallery space rather than to be worn on the body. However, this final year jewellery design student has created a collection that is more then worthy of fitting quite comfortably into both the art and fashion environment. Her final year project on the BA (Hons) Jewellery Design degree here at The London College of Fashion reflects the ever increasingly evident link between fashion and other genres of design; in this instance, somewhat paradoxically, post-modernist architecture. Her eclectic designs encompass the ideology of design that derived from the depths of the Bauhaus in the early 20th Century and expanded into its own aesthetic movement that would influence all areas of design for generations to come.

Watson also draws inspiration from other architectural design styles; the Koz building in Saint-Cloud, Paris....

...30 St Mary Axe (more commonly known as the Gherkin building here in London) whose influence can be seen within the diamond etchings in her jewellery pieces...

...and even the old Italian cliff-top towns of Riomaggiore and Manarola.

The semi-opaque acrylic structures frame a series of etched-effect panels, miniature cylindrical pillars and layered 'floors' all designed to aesthetically represent the idea of a building not merely being a boxed vessel but a complex construction of geometrical shapes, lines and layers; all of which are usually hidden within the folds of a structure, often going unnoticed by the streams of by-passers. Yes, agreeably, the relationship between the worlds of architecture and jewellery appear to be paradoxical to one another but at the same time both principles of construction draw from similar aesthetics as is visually represented through these pieces.

Watson's designs are, on reflection, prototypes of buildings, the miniature models you see in the glass cases of an architects showroom. When photographed off the body and in a linear configuration they resemble a spectra of urban, post-modernist skyline. If one placed a Lisa Watson design on their coffee table it would share more resemblance to a piece of conceptual art.

Whilst not entirely practical or commercially wearable these designs represent the freedom of expression and experimentation that is nurtured and encouraged here at LCF. In allowing raw creativity to be expressed, in turn, creates a future of non-conformist and daring designers to emerge from the creative folds of our university.

www.showtime.arts.ac.uk/lisawatson