February 22, 2025 |
Completedworks has never been one for convention. The London-based jewellery brand, founded in 2013, has carved out a niche with its fluid, sculptural designs and intellectually driven live presentations. For its SS25 showcase, creative director Anna Jewsbury opted to serve up her sustainable jewels on a surrealist silver platter. That show took shape as a three-act play inspired by French sculptor Camille Claudel, starring Dianna Agron and Lily Cole. Her current season show, unveiled earlier today, was no different.
Presented in a format that’s familiar to the brand but still feels nuanced compared to the traditional fashion show, the AW25 collection was unveiled as a short drama performance set on a live shopping channel. Unfolding at London’s Beveridge Hall, the spectacle starred two captivating characters adorned in Completedworks’ latest AW25 collection: American actress Debi Mazar as Julia, the shopping channel host, and model Aine O’Leary as Lucy, the resident model. Emotionally poignant yet flippantly humorous, the performance blurred the lines between theatre and reality, prompting the live audience to question where the performance ends and real life begins.
The pieces on view glimmered throughout. Necklaces of oversized pearls woven between smaller beads, chunky beaded chokers and shimmering drop earrings caught the light with every movement. It was a testament to Completedworks’ signature sculptural designs, primarily crafted from recycled materials, that critique consumerism while celebrating beauty.
Ahead of the unconventional showcase, we sat down with Anna Jewsbury, creative director of Completedworks; interior designer and founder of Hollie Bowden Interiors, Hollie Bowden, who created the set design; and writer Laura Waldren, who penned the script for the experiential presentation, to find out how it all came together.
Completedworks has always embraced unique activations and performative presentations. How do you feel the live format resonates with your brand and reflects upon the jewellery this season?
Anna Jewsbury: I think choosing to present our collections through a live format has always been about giving our pieces and collection life and context. Jewellery and accessories are often presented in a very traditional static format by the nature of the products so to me it’s exciting to push the boundaries of what is typically expected of an accessories brand and how we are used to seeing collections be presented. Through the live format, the pieces become more than static objects – they are part of an evolving narrative. It’s a way for us to recontextualise our work, allowing us to add to the Completedworks universe in an unexpected way.
What can we expect from the show this season?
Jewsbury: We’ve worked with a brilliant playwright, Laura Waldren, to create a short drama taking place on the set of a live shopping channel. Debi Mazar plays the shopping channel host, Julia, and model Aine O’Leary plays Lucy, the resident shopping channel model.
Can you walk us through the AW25 collection – what themes or narratives are woven into the designs?
Jewsbury: What I loved about the home shopping channel concept is that they often sell products that promise transformation and thrive on layering value into objects – through exaggerated descriptions, add-on offers and a sense of urgency that makes the product feel like a must-have. In tandem, the collection for AW25 touches on similar themes – it’s about pushing the limits of adornment – pushing jewellery beyond a singular statement into an accumulation of detail. It touches on the idea that nothing is ever truly complete – only continuously built upon. Jewellery has always been an act of embellishment, a way of elevating, highlighting or ornamenting the body. In this collection, we play with the idea that each piece is not just an embellishment but an embellished embellishment. A pearl becomes a base to be adorned – stones dangling over its surface, subverting its perfection. A crumpled bracelet doesn’t stand alone but itself carries the weight of additional crumpled charms. A Completedworks vase, once a static object, is reimagined as wearable jewellery – collapsing the boundaries between function, form and adornment.
How do you see the relationship between jewellery and performance evolving within Completedworks? Does one inform the other in your creative process?
Jewsbury: I hope we will continue finding opportunities to develop and evolve this aspect of what we do even more. We never create in isolation and I think it helps to be engaged in
dialogue with different people, formats and ways of thinking. I’d say in terms of the relationship, it’s more of a continuous interplay over one informing the other.
What emotions or ideas do you hope the audience takes away from both the collection and the showcase this season?
Jewsbury: I’ve always wanted our work to participate in and contribute to the cultural dialogue in some small way. So if people are excited by the show and questioning and engaging with it then I think that’s our biggest aim.
Tell us about the set design.
Hollie Bowden: I was so happy to be working with Completedworks and Anna again, on a second project together, after I designed their London showroom in 2023. Anna and I had a great shorthand together – a love of textured materials but with a purity and clean-ness about them. Initially I approached this project with a certain palette in mind, and Laura’s wonderful script also suggested a particular aesthetic. But as soon as I stepped into the location, Beveridge Hall, it sort of turned my concept on its head. The space is a glorious piece of late English Deco, and I knew in the first instant the production had to take its cues from the wood panelling, stone foyer and very modernist ambience. I was drawn to pieces that worked with Deco elements in the room, rather than being overtly from that historic period. More of a wink to the materials and finishes already present. The theme really evolved as I developed the set with the team. Debi’s costume was possibly going to go in quite a sexy, suit-y direction, so I wanted the set to compliment that. The concept of TV shopping through the lens of something more dark and sexy in a formal space was really intriguing.”
What can you tell us about the plot of the upcoming show? Was there a brief/what was the brief?
Laura Waldrin: The show is about a woman called Julia, who’s trying to host a shopping channel while battling some intrusive thoughts and fantasies. Completedworks wanted a ten-minute piece set on a shopping channel which featured one main character – but beyond that, I had pretty free rein!
What was the process like writing the script for this AW25 presentation? How did you approach blending storytelling with the brand’s aesthetic and core values?
Waldrin: Completedworks gave me some great cultural references which helped me achieve the tone they wanted for the show – exaggerated and comedic, but with a dark, surreal edge. They have such beautiful pieces, and I wanted to integrate them into the story, rather than having them feel like incidental props or costume – the brief was really helpful in that regard, so I also watched a lot of QVC and “Gem Shopping Network 24/7 Livestream” for inspiration. Then once I’d produced a first draft of the basic concept, we thought about how it could be honed and tweaked to suit the brand’s audience.
Is there a particular element or theme in this year’s script that you find especially intriguing or meaningful? What drew you to explore it?
Waldrin: I’d watched The Substance shortly before I got the commission, so I think that idea of women becoming invisible and expendable once they reach a certain age – especially in the TV industry – was at the forefront of my mind when I sat down to write it. I’d also recently read Gillian Anderson’s collection Want, which made me think a lot about the nature of female desire and how rooted it often is in escapism and fantasy. It’s also something that’s still seen as frightening and shameful, so I was drawn to the idea of putting that on stage in a frank and unapologetic way.
Photography courtesy of Completedworks.
