Copenhagen-based jewellery designer Sophie Bille Brahe is celebrating the tenth birthday of her eponymous brand in style with a floral-inspired new collection, titled No More ‘I Love You’s’. Brahe was inspired by tumbling fountains of flowers for the new collection, which casts diamonds and pearls into showers of precious blooms.
‘Flowers have always had a special meaning to me,’ says Bille Brahe. ‘When I was young, my dad would take me out in the garden of my childhood home, telling me stories about the flowers that he had planted. He would telephone me to say: ‘The blue Ipomea is close to blooming.’ These little things had extremely big meaning in our family. I lost my father in 2018, but sometimes when I’m in the garden of my childhood home, I find myself having a conversation with him. He planted the garden and I hear his voice when I am with the summer roses in the late afternoon light – he never tired of the beauty of roses. I really believe that my father was my earliest inspiration.’
Sophie Bille Brahe gives the flower motif a modern twist
The jewellery weaves this personal narrative into pearl and diamond rings, necklaces and earrings, drawing swirling hypnotic patterns that mimic the sensual curves of a flower. In the ‘Fontaine de Fleur’ earrings, cascades of differently sized diamond flowers brilliantly catch the light. Swirls of diamonds would make for chic alternative engagement rings. In the ‘Fleur de Tennis’, a traditional tennis necklace is rethought in diamonds, while, elsewhere, pearls form sumptuous bunches over the collarbone or dangle from earlobes.
‘My designs are classic, but always with a “tiny clash” – a detail or twist, imbuing my jewellery with a modern assertiveness,’ says Bille Brahe. ‘Flowers are a common motif in jewellery, yet I try to infuse it with a modern twist, paring the settings right back to display the raw unadorned beauty of the diamonds. For me, it’s an unflawed match,’ she adds.
She draws on this modernity with jewellery design that puts the pearls and diamonds centre stage: ‘For me, the way I create jewellery is much more about taking away things instead of adding. I always think, how simple can you show a pearl? How clean can you show a diamond? I don’t feel a setting should ever take the focus away from the material, unless the setting is part of the story that I want to tell.
‘I design for myself and my friends first, like-minded individuals looking to find a new way of wearing jewellery.’
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