June 5, 2024 |
Shifting her focus from ready-to-wear to singular jewellery and apparel, Vesper Obscura is the new brand (or rather, rebranded brand) from Mia Vesper. Dedicated to sustainable, conscious production, the young American designer skyrocketed to success after launching her namesake label in 2017. But despite the notoriety she garnered through a cult customer following and numerous celebrity credits – namely Beyoncé, who she dressed in 2020, alongside her backup dancers, for the Black Is King visual album – Vesper felt that she needed to shift her modus operandi away from the fast-paced standards of fashion and return to her roots: made-to-order creations crafted from vintage and specialty textiles and materials, with an added expansion into prismatic jewellery.
Vesper Obscura’s pieces demand attention when they are worn. The Maryland born, New York-based designer almost exclusively uses vintage tapestries and textiles to create these extraordinary pieces which are described on her website as “obscurities, curiosities and fantasies”. Using dead-stock and vintage stones, the designer is incredibly conscious of avoiding waste while maintaining the qualities unique to each piece, aiming to preserve history and revive excitement among younger generations for the more outlandish adornments that flooded the market before their time.
Since rebranding, Vesper has expressed that she finds more solace in the process of jewellery making than she did in ready-to-wear. And while she hasn’t completely abandoned clothing design (Vesper Obscura also offers few-of-a-kind garb made in NYC from new, vintage and artisan materials sourced around the world) adornments have become her strong suit, even earning her a Fashion Trust U.S. 2024 nomination for jewellery. And for good reason. Her ornamental treasures are kaleidoscopic, playful and meticulously detailed. To a maximalist, Vesper’s designs are like love at first sight.
With each piece, Vesper is breaking traditions and redefining what we consider to be ‘classic’. Every one of the new brand’s pieces is like a artefact you can keep with you and allow to walk alongside you throughout your life. Offering necklaces, earrings, waist chains and rings made to be worn and adored, the designer wants people to have fun with what they wear; minimalism is safe, but why be safe when you can be obscure?
Here we speak with Vesper about shuttering her namesake label and launching Vesper Obscura, designing for future generations and working with vintage textiles and semiprecious stones.
On the evolution of Mia Vesper
It’s impossible to understand what having your own brand will be like before you do it (FWIW that is not an endorsement to try it out). I still saw fashion in the lens of a spectator. I had a naive idea of working in the fashion industry that lingered from the golden age of opportunity in the ‘90s. When the tech boom happened, blogging and Instagram only seemed to sweeten the deal. Plucked out of relative obscurity, you could *be someone* it seemed.
That is sort of what happened with Mia Vesper. I started when upcycling was barely percolating online. I had a few cool opportunities that came from posting my pieces on Instagram and soon I had a brand that ran away with me. I was out of my depth with what looked like overnight success but I was drowning. I had to make a lot of concessions to make money, including shifting from upcycling and into ready-to-wear. Nothing can prepare you for what you’re getting yourself into (not school, not internships). If you can’t lose $15,000 on a production mistake, you can’t play in this pond.
At some point, I was begging for it to end. I felt stripped of personhood to some level and I didn’t even live in the world that was supposed to be inspiring my work.
Once I made it to a certain point I was comfortable enough giving up that it allowed me to start over. Mia Vesper also gained me thousands of customers – so that helped too.
So I guess personally, Vesper Obscura is about gaining clarity. And in the brand sense, it is a shift back to my roots in rare and specialty textiles (although it’s important to note that the collection is not exclusively made from vintage this time around). It’s also hugely marked by my expansion into jewellery. Jewellery has been a huge generator of calm in the last couple of years. The sustainability factor and the saleability factor are leagues beyond clothes.
One day soon I want to add a section called “obscurities” which may include things like teaspoons, prints, rocks and lovable miscellany of the moment.
On Designing for anthropologists and future generations
I wanted to create jewellery that felt equally special to the clothing I make from specialty textiles. I make jewellery that harkens back to a time when someone might wear a pendant the size of a plum. An heirloom piece you could say, but I use today’s aesthetics to do it: unfaceted stones, a reliance on chain, silver and simplistic settings.
I don’t come from a typical design background. I think being somewhat philistine to contemporary methods helps my aesthetic. I don’t live under a rock – no, and I am conscious of replicating others, but I try to keep my creative process child-like. Children are folk artists in their own right. I picked up my design aesthetic from the generations before me.
Growing up in a family of collectors influenced my obsession with distinguishing real value from perceived value. It also gave me an understanding of “what was” and a intuition for “what’s to come.”
On Her Interest In Vintage and Artisan Textiles
[It came from] my mom. She was an antique collector and textile designer. My mom and I loved dressing up, but money and places to shop were both in short supply. We would paint fish we caught in the river and use them to stamp our T-shirts. I took those memories as inspirations when creating textiles.
Most of my family has an aversion to symbols of wealth but an adoration of intense decoration. My grandmother was a costume designer for the ballet. Crystals and silk flowers were never in short supply – but she also had a [Great] Depression Era mindset. I remember turning the car around once after dinner to retrieve a to-go box that contained only a dollop of uneaten sour cream from her side of potatoes. That concern for waste and DIY attitude followed me.
On Sourcing Vintage Glass and Semiprecious Stones
I have always collected all manners of transparent miscellany, such as aquarium rocks, lucite sculptures, loose chandelier crystals, czech crosses. One day, in the midst of one of my many internet rabbit holes, I came across my now jewellery partner who created beautiful and unique pieces out of vintage glass. The vintage glass from our layering chokers comes from Germany. The thousands of deadstock stones come from the 1950s and ‘60s.
As for the new semiprecious stones I use, those are generally chosen based on their size. Most gems can’t be cut into hunks the size of an ice cube without a prohibitive price. Stones like citrine, amethyst, tiger eye, onyx and chalcedony sourced in India are my current favourites.
On Discovering an interest in jewellery making and design
I’m a bit of a blunt instrument when it comes to design. Jewellery is fast and fun and colourful and easy to sell. The architecture is so sound and so straightforward. I make paper models all the time and what comes back from the factory is usually precisely what I imagined. Failed experimentation is not something I feel sick over, which has grown to be true with my clothing.
I also think jewellery is the future. Gen Z’s predilection for ironic magpie style may have thrown athleisure for a loop but it’s a loop that never closes. Casual comfort will find its way back and I think stacks of jewellery will be the new mode of expression.
On her creative process
I work alone in hyper focused silence from 10am to 10pm most days. My cats are always in arms length, fabric scraps and chains covering almost every possible surface. I work from my apartment; my cleaning lady saves my life. I design 10 or so pieces in a single day every couple weeks. I still sketch on paper, and often with jewellery I make a 3D model with paper or even clay. I used to do a lot more cads and patterns but now realise those “best practices” can slow things down. People who work in production are mathematicians – they’re architects; the skill required is magnificent. Muddling through hours of patterning and problem solving for what will be instantly corrected by someone with 30 years more experience is not on my list of ways to spend my time in 2024.
On Her enduring source of Inspiration
When I watched my mom draw I was so awe inspired. She was not a practising artist but she had a style and an ease that was so impressive and intuitive. I thought she was a genius, gifted, singular. She wasn’t compelled by herself at all, really. The artistic lesson I took from that was two parted: follow your talent, but only when you have something interesting to say. Otherwise do something else or keep it as a hobby. I have an ocean’s worth of memories with her to inspire my clothing and my textiles.
On Vesper Obscura’s interchangeable charms
I loved the limitations of these charms – they are enamel and glass so they had to be drawn in a very simple way that could only capture a likeness. I love that – capturing a likeness. Like drawing from a verbal description.
The inspiration for the motifs was partially inspired by the textiles I source – Persian pictorial carpets and Uzbek tapestries of animals. And once again – my mom. She was also a wildlife rehabilitator and I grew up in rural Maryland; we helped snakes and squirrels and ducks – even baby skunks once. I love animals
On the Misconceptions of the jewellery industry
Classics are one thing, traditions are another. Classics serve a demand and purpose, tradition serves an agenda. In jewellery, there’s a misconception that rarity is correlated to beauty, longevity, etc and therefore that price is directly proportional, which is also untrue. These are things we let steer the industry because they have existed forever. In no world do you need to pay thousands for a ring to set you apart from the crowd. A lot of people believe that a beautiful but simple design is the hardest to achieve. Sorry, I don’t. Marrying the weird with the rote and making it commercially viable is the challenge and joy of my design career.
On the future of OBSCURA JEWELS?
I’d love to get more into subverting fine jewellery which is usually pretty staid and almost always dainty. I’m not saying fine jewellery today is not beautiful – I just dont think it’s particularly cool. And that’s a shame because it is the perfect arena to test designs that may never lift off commercially. A $10,000 piece does not need more than one buyer. People in those spaces aren’t having as much fun as they should.
Photography by Noa Griffel.
Mia Vesper
