In a classical, romantic garden near Copenhagen, Kaya Wilkins is wearing a fountain of flowers. Photographed by Casper Sejersen, the musician, actor, and artist known as Okay Kaya is adorned in jewels from the spring/summer 2022 collection by Sophie Bille Brahe. In clusters of baroque Bellis pearls and in the Fontaine series of cascading diamonds, like the Fontaine de Fleur earrings.

Fleur / Flower

Though not an uncommon theme in jewellery design, the florals in Sophie Bille Brahe’s designs are unique, for they are filtered through her contemporary Danish sensibility. With the raw, unadorned beauty of dazzling diamonds and the warm glow of gold, these pieces are rendered in a magical sort of modernism. 

I think of my late grandmother’s signature ring, an antique bouquet of diamonds. Can see it on her hand still. I think, also, of the English roses that bloomed wild and free in her garden. Can smell them still. Can trace their outline in my mind, as if etched upon my heart. And I can’t help but feel that there is something so endearing about gardens immortalised in gold. 

For spring/summer 2022, Sophie Bille Brahe has filled her universe with flowers—those cut from diamonds and those clustered from pearls. Also those that cannot be seen but that tell a story of where we have been: flowers as a force of memory. 

Speaking of the inspirations behind her spring/summer 2022 collection, the Danish designer points to Patti Smith, along with beloved memories of her late father. ‘Patti speaks so beautifully about loss: the feeling that she would never love anyone so deeply again, then coming to terms with grief as part of life, unavoidable,’ the designer says. ‘It’s what makes us human, and we keep those we lose within us always. I feel the truth in that.’

Sophie speaks of losing her father in 2018 but still feeling connected to him through flowers. ‘[S]ometimes when I’m in the garden of my childhood home, I find myself having a conversation with him. He planted the garden and I hear his voice when I am with the summer roses in the late afternoon light—he never tired of the beauty of roses.’

These roots run deep right throughout the designer’s spring/summer 2022 collection. ‘[It] is more about emotions than anything else,’ Sophie shares. ‘I designed [this collection] with my feelings. In the end there are a lot of flowers—maybe that was my dad, or maybe I am having my “flower phase.”’

Named after an Annie Lennox song, the No More “I Love You’s” collection is nonetheless full of love, each piece of jewellery like a love letter to the wearer. I believe my grandmother would have adored it, just as I do. Jewels at once timeless and yet effortlessly contemporary. Thumbing through some behind-the-scenes imagery, I love watching this collection in action, as pearls bud upon an earlobe, and diamonds bloom wild and free upon a necklace. Just like my grandmother’s roses.

‘One early summer’s day they gathered outside Copenhagen in a Versailles-inspired formal garden,’ Sophie Bille Brahe sets the scene via Instagram. ‘At noon, they paused for lunch, cooked by Sophie’s brother Frederik. The sun shone and it was one of those days that feels golden.’

And so, resplendent with diamond flowers and posies of pearls, Sophie Bille Brahe’s spring/summer 2022 jewellery collection sparkles with the power of flowers. It illustrates how our memories come to be enfolded amongst the petals. And in doing so, it sows the seeds for a brand new Golden Age. 

fin.

Photographer Catharina Pavitschitz at Eighteen Management

Mamiya RZ Pro II

London, UK
8 & 9 June 2022