Nomis Jewelry Offers New Looks with a Twist

By equal measures soft and bold, whimsical and precise, Alyona Kiperman embodies the aesthetic of her Nomis jewelry brand.  

A designer by happenstance, Kiperman originally trained as a lawyer; she came from a family of doctors and engineers, with “zero creative people,” she says. Structure was a normal part of her daily life. But after meeting her husband and becoming a housewife, she found herself growing bored and began listening to the artistic voice inside urging her to create. 

The idea for her transformable jewelry first came to her when she was playing with her daughter’s ring. She went to wash dishes and didn’t want to put it on the counter, so she stuck it on her ear, and Nomis was born. 

“After I turned the ring into [an ear] cuff, I started thinking, how can I put my earrings around my neck, and how can I lock it on? What can I add to it, how many pieces can this become?” she recalls. “I think about this constantly, when I’m falling asleep, or on the train, when I’m bored mostly. That’s why it’s really important to be bored. That’s when inspiration comes to me.” 

Double vision 

At the beginning, she only designed for herself, because she had little confidence in her skills. However, when friends saw her sporting her own jewelry, they began asking to buy pieces as well, which eventually led her to launch her own brand. She now has stores in the US, the UK, Ukraine, France and Moldova. 

The brand’s name is a nod to the two sides of her personality: the creative and the technical. Nomis plays on the possessive version of her Hebrew name, Nomi — but if you spell it backward, it’s a close match to her daughter’s name, Simona.  

Kiperman’s customers also embrace their own duality, she says. “It’s relevant for all people. They sometimes need to be soft, but at other times need to be sharp, and quite strong or masculine. In all our pieces, it’s actually a requirement to add angles as well as softer shapes. Each of our pieces consists of two messages — let’s call them masculine and feminine.” 

Kiperman isn’t sure what comes first in her creative process — whether she gets the inspiration for a design and then adds the technical aspects that let it transform into multiple pieces, or whether she first gets an idea for movement, then molds the design to fit the technical constraints. What she does know is that she is more interested in shape and structure than in materials — and that when she creates a piece, it must be functional, it must look great, it must be durable and comfortable, and it must be wearable in multiple ways. 

No such thing as too many 

Kiperman’s pieces generally have two or three options for wearability — a ring that can also be an ear cuff, and sometimes a pendant — but others can transform into as many as seven different styles.  

Every piece in the collection clips, folds, locks or twists to connect with others. So a portion of a full sautoir necklace with a pendant can unclip once to form a mid-length chain, and then further to produce a choker. The chain and pendant can be dismantled into bracelets and a brooch, and then — surprise! — the brooch folds in half to become a ring, which then opens slightly to slip onto an earlobe. 

Even the individual segments provide options. Bracelets are often two-sided — say, with gold on one side, silver on the other — so they can be worn either way. They can also clip into a necklace on either side, so the piece can present as all gold, or a mix of gold and silver. 

Lest one think that Kiperman is all ideas, leaving the implementation to others, she makes it known that she’s behind everything from the design of the mechanisms to the proportions, sizes and stone placements. And if her manufacturer tells her it can’t be done, she shows them exactly how it can. 

Always in motion 

Never one to let the gears of her mind settle, Kiperman is now taking the time to learn sculpture. She recently learned how to work with marble and is now moving on to metal, with plans to incorporate both into her designs. To that end, she’s been looking at ways to keep the materials’ weight and cost down when she adds them. 

Kiperman’s ideal customer, she says, probably needs to be a bit like her. “The customer of my dreams is generous, but also open-minded; they are curious and always looking for something new, not only in jewelry, but everywhere. And for my customer, one should never be enough — not one way to wear jewelry, or even one way to wear a skirt or a sock, or anything, for that matter.” 

Main image: Eindhoven ear cuff/ring/pendant. (Nomis)