February 6, 2026 |
BLINGIN’ IT IS TEN’S ONLINE SERIES WHERE WE SPOTLIGHT THE INNOVATORS AND CHANGE-MAKERS OF THE JEWELLERY WORLD.
At Robert Wun’s SS26 couture show – which took place in Paris at the end of January – Anabela Chan’s jewellery became a working component of the clothes. Staged inside the Lido cabaret club, with models moving against projected thunderstorms, the collection unfolded in three acts – Library, Luxury and Valour – charting the process of creation from research to resolve. Chan’s – who has her own eponymous brand – contribution came into focus at the precise moment the collection began to question what luxury actually weighs.
Library opened with restraint. The walk was measured and almost severe: straight-backed, eyes forward, arms close to the body. Black-and-white looks appeared drafted rather than styled, their silhouettes sharp and architectural. Jewellery was deliberately absent, reinforcing the sense of preparation and mental labour. Nothing distracted from cut, proportion or movement.
The mood shifted in Act II: Luxury. As the lighting warmed, Chan’s jewellery entered – and immediately changed how the models occupied space. Velvet bodices were paired with oversized necklaces, sautoirs and chest pieces that referenced royal collections from French courts to Indian maharajahs. These weren’t light touches. Some pieces sat high and rigid on the torso, others dropped heavily across the chest, forcing slower steps and careful turns. Shoulders rolled back to support the weight; pauses lingered a second longer than usual.
Chan produced 40 one-of-a-kind pieces for the show, all handmade in her London workshop using her Fruit Gems – cabochons synthesised from natural fruit and vegetable waste – combined with laboratory-grown rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds. (Her namesake brand specialises in these types of jewels, making it the first brand in the world to do so.) In total, the stones exceeded a thousand carats. Under the Lido’s theatrical lighting, the jewellery read as dense and deliberate rather than flashy: surfaces caught cleanly, edges stayed crisp, colour did the work.
By Valour, jewellery and garment seemed to lock together. Metallic torso pieces and flocked armour forms echoed the earlier jewels, shifting them from display objects into protection. The walk sharpened again – longer strides, firmer turns – as ballgowns saturated in cobalt crystals and liquid columns reinforced with hard shells moved through the space with intent.
Chan’s background – architecture under Richard Rogers, fashion at Alexander McQueen, goldsmithing at the RCA – was evident in the clarity of the collaboration. This jewellery altered posture, pacing and presence. In Wun’s hands, luxury became something physical, and in Chan’s, it became something you had to carry. Here, we chat to Chan about her introduction to jewellery, what inspires her and what it was like working with Wun.
ON HER FIRST MEMORIES OF JEWELLERY
I was born in Hong Kong into a family with three generations in the film industry. My great-grandmother was the first Chinese female action movie star; she rode a Harley Davidson and made over 35 movies from the 1920s to the 1960s in Shanghai. My grandmother subsequently became the first Chinese female film director. Growing up, I was exposed to an abundance of beauty, from imagery, cinematography, props to jewellery, and that has influenced me significantly. I have always loved storytelling through photography and the magic it brings; they are an intrinsic part of my brand and creations. But my first exposure to high fine jewellery really began in my teens, when my mother moved to Paris and I attended boarding school in the UK – I would spend every half-term with her and we would stroll across Place Vendôme where I always had my face pressed against the windows of the great jewellery maisons with incredible treasures through the looking glass. My sister who studied medicine and engineering had no interest at all and would always hurry me along!
ON HER ENTRY INTO THE JEWELLERY WORLD
Jewellery is the ultimate treasure and the most magical thing you can wear – it is timeless, non-seasonal and has the ability to empower and bring immense personal joy. For something so small that can be held in the palm of your hand, it can hold a world of emotions and memories. An object of art and craftsmanship that can be worn on the body, close to our hearts. My first job after graduating from UCL was with Sir Richard Rogers in London, working on the design of World Trade Centre Tower 3 in New York. I think my architectural training has influenced my attention to details; the harmony and balance with forms and structures, the sensibility of scale, proportion, geometry, materiality and story-telling are all very similar traits shared between architects and jewellers. Visual imagery is very important in my work as a medium for storytelling; the emotive sensitivity of what you see is both powerful and moving. I grew up as a student obsessing over the genius of Alexander McQueen – the beauty, duality and depth in his vision and work; the drama, the storytelling, the craftsmanship – it was as much fashion as it was art. It remains one of my greatest privileges to have worked at his studio during his fleeting lifetime. After working in fashion for four years, I returned to the Royal College of Art to complete my Masters in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing and Jewellery in 2013 and launched my eponymous fine jewellery brand upon graduation.
ON THE ANABELA CHAN SPIRIT
What we represent in the fine jewellery world is the future – a brand where science innovation merges with artistic creations and true sustainability with ethical practice; we constantly strive to work with nature to better it rather than deplete it. It is a celebration of traditional, artisan craftsmanship combined with modern technology and material science. As a jewellery designer, I choose to focus my work with laboratory-grown, created and recycled gemstones and materials. It has been my mission since day one to offer a different perspective in the industry – to create equally beautiful and one-of-a-kind red carpet worthy jewellery without the conflict, humanitarian, and environmental issues associated with mining. Intentions play a pivotal role, guiding every decision I make – from discovering new ways to create gemstones to exploring innovative metals. Jewellery is empowering because it brings joy, inspires emotions and elevates the spirit like no other. I love its longevity to transcend generations – it does not decay or go away, it is a chance to hold onto the past and at the same time reach out to the future, and I find that endearingly romantic.
ON WHAT INSPIRES HER
Nature is my greatest source of inspiration, as it offers the most beautiful colours, geometries, textures, proportions, and forms. I am particularly captivated by exotic birds and butterflies. Their mesmerising colours, their diversity, and their sense of freedom – there is something almost magical about their flight, which seems to symbolise the essence of imagination. Flowers have also fascinated me throughout my life – from the budding blooms of spring to their full blossoms and even their decaying forms. I have loved painting flowers since I was a little girl, and I cherish the fact that no two flowers are ever the same. Observing them closely reveals the tiny details that make each one unique, highlighting the beauty in their individuality.
[Once], I travelled through the Amazon rainforest and stumbled upon a local market, where I found a box of macaw feathers collected from their natural molting process. I created part of my final graduate collection at the Royal College of Art with these incredible artefacts.
ON BEING THE WORLD’S FIRST BRAND CHAMPIONING LABORATORY GROWN AND CREATED GEMSTONES
Our mission from the beginning has been to become the most sustainable fine jewellery brand in the world. We are proud to be the first fine jewellery brand to champion laboratory-grown gemstones and recycled metals, paired with high jewellery design and artisanal craftsmanship, always with a focus is on ethical and circular innovations. Many people are unaware that commercial industrial mining is one of the most destructive industries on the planet. To mine a one carat diamond, 1,100 tonnes of earth have to be removed from the ground. If we can transition from destruction to conservation through science and innovation, the world will be better for it.
ON MERGING SCIENCE AND ART
In addition to championing laboratory-grown gemstones and recycled metals, our first innovation collection Blooms! Which launched in 2020 was a research and development project that took over two years, pioneering the use of recycled and refined aluminium from soda cans in fine jewellery. Before launching the Blooms Collection in 2020, I was researching recycled gold from the technology industry, but I struggled to find a single source that came purely from recycled tech waste. It was always a mix of different sources. I was drinking a can of soda at the time, and I realised that aluminium can be recycled indefinitely. The challenge with recycled aluminium is overcoming impurities that causes porosity, to refine the metal to a state that it can cast like liquid gold and silver. That collection opened so many creative doors as it led me to discover new ways of colouring the metal, too, using a technique called physical vapour deposition, borrowed from the sports car industry, using titanium, argon and oxygen to achieve a rainbow flash of colours.
Fruit Gems is our second innovation collection: launched in 2025 after three years of research. Crafted in our atelier, our Fruit Gems are radiant creations drawn from the world’s most vivid botanicals. The idea first came to me during Covid 2020 – I was volunteering at Notting Hill Community Church in London at the time, helping with sorting grocery donations from supermarkets to be re-distributed to disadvantaged families in the city. I saw the vast quantities of perfectly good fresh produce just beyond their sell-by dates that were delivered as unsellable surplus. I began to research food waste around the world and learnt that over 40 per cent of food available to us in the West goes to landfill sites as excess – this equates to over nine million tonnes in the UK and a staggering 44 million tonnes of food waste in the US every year. I thought to myself – what if we can take perfectly ripen fruits and vegetables just beyond their sell by dates, and turn them into a new genre of vibrant gemstones synthesised from natural matters?
Learning from ancient foraging and pigmentation techniques, we harness pigments from food waste gently extracted from beetroots, spinach, blueberries, dragon fruit, spirulina and more, bonded and stabilised with a bio-resin foundation derived from plants and renewable organic materials such as corn, soybean, agave and avocado seeds. Each gemstone is a celebration of colour and nature – alive with the essence of the earth and completed with artisanal precision. The rough Fruit Gems can then be cut, faceted and polished the same way as natural gemstones, with the ability to be casted into forms like molten metals. Every step was a challenge, it took painstaking, meticulous repetitions of trial and error for each type of fruit and vegetable, who all behave and react differently. We tested over 30 types and launched the collection with eight of our best results.
Learning from Fruit gems, we also proudly introduce our Regenerative-Gemstones – a pioneering blend of sustainability and luxury. Discover a reimagined Amber, infused with the golden hues of autumn leaves and twigs, alongside ethically recreated rose quartz, amethyst, malachite and lapis lazuli – each regenerated from lapidary off-cuts to give forgotten fragments a dazzling second life.
ON WORKING WITH ROBERT WUN
I have always admired Robert’s imagination and ingenuity, we connected originally via Instagram. It is always exciting to work with him – his work is pure poetry and art. We have collaborated on five collections to date and each one tells a different story in his haute couture journey – always iconic, inspiring and intoxicatingly beautiful. His narrative and singular vision also pushes me out of my comfort zone and I love that challenge.
The SS26 Collection is titled Valour – inspired by the journey of creating and the emotions of a creator in three powerful acts – the pure black and white dreams of Library, the envy-inducing opulence of Luxury, and the defiant courage of Valour, where creators often unseen, turn their inner battles into badges of honour. From our iconic Morse Code Earrings which spell secret messages every season, to fluttering weightless feathered butterfly earrings and embroideries, to Maharajah and Royal jewels inspired body armours – in particular the infamous Patiala Necklace I saw at the V&A Cartier retrospective last year – this season features over thirty custom jewellery creations with 8892 calibrated-cut laboratory-grown gemstones – totalling over 6600 carats of sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds.
At the start of each season, around two to three months prior to the show, I sit down with Robert at his studio in East London to go through each look and story and the essence of his vision and I study the fabric swatches, colour tones, embroideries, textures, forms and proportions. I then go away and work on my design proposals in the form of sketches and visuals. We meet again to discuss and finalise the designs – and the magic and metamorphosis happen at the workshop once we turn ideas into creations – all handcrafted meticulously using traditional fine jewellery techniques and craftsmanship, often paired with innovative materials.
ON CHALLENGING JEWELLERY NORMS
Every step we take makes a difference. Awareness is crucial – understanding how things are made, where they come from, and their end-of-life impact. While we can’t dictate actions, we can inspire others by highlighting the beauty of the nature we are privileged to enjoy, encouraging collective efforts to protect it. It is important to reflect and learn from the past to bring a new perspective in the present, always in mind a better future.
ON THE FUTURE OF ANABELA CHAN
[Going forward the plan is] to continue to learn and experiment along the way. I’m excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible, what is luxury, and what is the future.
Photography courtesy of Anabela Chan.
Anabela Chan
