In 2016, you moved from the United Kingdom to Los Angeles, California. What has the transition been like for the brand?
It was like going to the land of milk and honey. We were doing trade shows over here, so it was an easy transition for us. It is such a huge and buoyant market over here. It’s just so unbelievably different from trying to do business in the UK.
Does being a Brit give you an edge in the US?
Not necessarily in terms of just being British, but more my training and my viewpoint. Over here, there’s a culture of people doing designs and getting them manufactured. In the UK, so many more designers come from the bench.
Has being based in America changed you as a designer?
I wasn’t expecting it to change before I got here, but it’s absolutely changed. I feel like there was the freedom and the scope and the opportunity to make bigger and bolder and more colorful work. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it was just something that happened. I looked back on the work I made in the first year that we moved here and I was like, “wow.” I don’t think I would have made that work in the UK.
Casting gems rather than setting them is your signature. Do you think you’ll ever move away from that?
It’s absolutely synonymous with who we are as a brand, and it’s what I’ve always done and what makes us different. I felt like when I started, I was the only person doing it, and now I feel like we’ve made a space for new and interesting work. It’s become its own kind of area, I suppose. I love the process and the technique, and it’s a lifelong challenge to keep developing and evolving the way we do things. I can’t imagine becoming bored of it.
Are there particular Polly Wales icons that will never fade away?
Yes, definitely. The work has evolved a huge amount, but at the same time, the core pieces I’ve been making for 10 years and more are still our bread and butter, like the Confetti rings and the Spinning Disc necklaces. All of that stuff is still so much what we’re known for, and pretty much 50% of our business.
How do you work with diamonds?
We use a lot of diamonds. We do a lot of bridal pieces; that’s a growing part of our business. Diamonds are great, as they’re such hard stones to work with — not as in difficult, but actually hard — so they lend themselves really well to being cast. Working with diamonds is always a joy.
Are people more reticent about having a diamond cast than a colored gemstone?
No, I don’t think so. We get a lot of people bringing us their family diamonds to rework into new pieces. We probably get more diamonds than we do anything else. I think one of the things I started doing a long time ago, which I see a lot more now, is that we use a lot of the diamonds upside down. I love the underside of stones and all the different cuts you get to see.
What will we see from Polly Wales in 2019?
We’re going to be launching a new collection in February, which will revisit a lot of the classic pieces — the Confetti rings and Crystal rings and Spinning Discs. We’ll launch new colorways and create a much more opulent version of the Rainbow. The next collection will be at Couture in June, and that’s going to be much more of a technical evolution of what we do. It’s going to be very light, almost spun pieces that are going to be encrusted with stones, almost like crystalline forms. Like how you grow a crystal on a piece of string? They’re going to be like that. I think it’s going to be amazing.
Image: Eight-ring Shield stack, Polly Wales.Article from the Rapaport Magazine - February 2019. To subscribe click here.