“Textiles carry a rich history of cultural significance, craftsmanship, and artistry, much like fine jewelry,” remarks Sara Freedenfeld, founder of Amáli Jewelry. “By merging the two, jewelers are able to explore new dimensions of texture, storytelling and innovation.”
This is what the designer believes lies behind the growing trend of jewelers creating textile-inspired pieces. In many cases, the process involves translating the look or feel of fabric into precious metals.
Freedenfeld has drawn on traditional handloom weaving techniques since launching Amáli in 2006, combining 18-karat-gold chains with gemstones to produce a fabric-like texture.
“The goal is to evoke a sense of softness, movement and intimacy with materials that are traditionally hard and rigid,” she explains. “By mimicking textiles, we create a connection between the familiar — woven fabrics — and the extraordinary — gold and gemstones.”
The influence of textiles and couture is evident in recent high-jewelry creations. Dior reinterprets lace for its latest collection, Dior Milly Dentelle. This follows last year’s Dior Délicat high-jewelry pieces that emulated embroidery, and 2023’s Dearest Dior, which also featured gold “lace.” Chanel, meanwhile, has translated one of its signature fabrics into precious materials, releasing a new chapter of the Tweed de Chanel collection in 2023. Boucheron founder Frédéric Boucheron came from a family of drapers, and current creative director Claire Choisne drew on this last year for the house’s Power of Couture collection. Its 24 pieces take inspiration from ceremonial attire. Among them is the Tricot choker, which took 1,070 hours to make and features five strands of sandblasted rock crystal that give the necklace a knitted appearance.
The loom where it happens
Creating textile-inspired designs can be a painstaking process. Fourth-generation fine jeweler Carolina Bucci says it took much effort and practice to create fabric from fine materials for her eponymous brand’s Woven collection. She used a modified Renaissance-era Florentine textile loom to weave 18-karat gold both with and without silk thread. She then evolved this technique for her customizable Color Field designs, arranging gem-set gold castings on 18-karat gold chains and handweaving them together with silk thread on the loom.
“It’s about the comfort, how [the jewelry] dresses your wrist or your neck, how it sits, and how you almost don’t feel it once you have it on, as you wouldn’t necessarily feel a silk scarf,” she says.
Bucci’s first textile-inspired pieces, which she launched more than 20 years ago, were the Lucky bracelets she designed to capture and elevate the cotton friendship bracelets she’d made growing up. London-based Jessica McCormack — who is opening a store on New York’s Madison Avenue this spring — had a similar inspiration for her recent Tapestry collection, drawing on the friendship bracelets of her own childhood for the diamond, emerald and sapphire designs.
Threads that bind
It is the weaving aspect that seems to have the greatest influence on jewelers. Seaman Schepps’s Sconset collection, which the brand introduced in November 2024, includes 18-karat-gold designs inspired by woven Nantucket lightship baskets. Brazilian designer Silvia Furmanovich worked on a collection last year with artisans who were proficient in a centuries-old Chilean horse-mane weaving technique.
British jeweler Megan Brown has a personal link to weaving: Her family has a textile mill in northern England. “The actual textile that I’m creating — the pattern and the colors — is feeding from what I’ve seen on the looms, but also the [look and feel of finished] fabrics,” says Brown, one of more than 30 jewelers participating in an exhibition at The Goldsmiths’ Centre in London. “Interwoven: Jewellery Meets Textiles,” runs until April 3 and explores how today’s jewelers employ textile techniques, aesthetics and materials.
Brown weaves fine gold chain for her Woven Rays pieces to recreate the tightness of the fine worsted fabric that her family’s mill produces. For the more voluminous and sculptural designs of her Amure and Hasir collections, she works in gold, platinum and palladium wire, taking inspiration from the Iranian craft of Hasir Bafi, or mat weaving. “Because it’s all handwoven, each piece has a slight movement or character to it, which would replicate how I was feeling that day,” relates Brown. “Each piece has its own story.”
Main image: Close-up of a Silvia Furmanovich earring made with woven horse mane. (Silvia Furmanovich)
