"Even the smallest piece can change your mood!", Clova Rae-Smith goes political launching a teeth jewellery line with an intriguing conceptual approach
Interview by Tommaso Höger / hogertommaso
Photography Olivia Ulpiani
“Even the smallest piece can change your mood!” says Clova Rae-Smith, a 22-year-old independent jewellery designer based in London who’s really rocking the game with an outrageously fresh and intriguing conceptual approach. Despite her very young age, her work has been featured in music videos, shootings, catwalks, and some major fashion editorials: her quirky teeth jewels are slowly but surely taking over the market. But her passion for jewellery comes from far away: “When I was 18 and doing my foundation year, I had to choose between sculpture and design. I was always drawn to design because it’s art with a function, and that’s when I discovered Jewellery: Jewellery is sculpture to the body, but it’s also design, so it has a purpose, when you can adorn yourself, even with something small, you can feel more confident.”
Photography Ben Wescott Model Aimée Smith
But how small? Apparently, the size of your tooth is enough! Clova is specialised in casting unique and eye-catching tooth caps and grillz. From bloody vampire fangs and rainbow grillz to coral reefs and rose thorns adorning your mouth, to even a snake crawling around your gingiva, it seems like there’s nothing that Clova can’t cast. “Teeth jewellery is something that is not seen a lot, but it definitely has an effect: people have a different reaction to it than to other forms of jewellery. It’s such a small detail but it draws people to focus in on your face. I expect to see a lot more teeth jewellery in the future.”
Photography Olivia Ulpiani
Thanks to young and talented designers like Clova, we are becoming more and more aware that art and fashion are the mirror of our society, it’s not just about beauty, they tell stories, our stories. As an independent business owner and member of the lgbtq+ community, Clova is doing her part, and she’s nailing it! Her silver GAY signet ring, available in any size, and her BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS chain are something you don’t want to miss: “I created the GAY ring primarily for myself, to proudly show support to the community. But now I’m donating the 20% of the profits to LGBTQ+ youth homelessness charities. It is political in some ways, but I really want people to wear something they are proud of and that they can connect to. As a person, my femininity and masculinity are very fluid, and so is my work. My creations are never for a specific gender, I get messages from people saying that they connect with my work on this level: someone messaged me about one of my chains and told me it was perfect for him as other chains seemed too masculine. The piece was part of my BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS collection: part of the concept is that it takes hard work to create a piece, and sometimes we even cut ourselves in the making. I wanted to spread awareness about the world of small designers compared to fast fashion.”
Photography Olivia Ulpiani
It is clear that behind a brilliant piece there’s brilliant creative process. Clova tells that when she first started, she didn’t have access to precious materials, but a piece can definitely be rich in concept. Following the steps of a young McQueen she would look for materials as iron or rubber in trash bins and assembling them on a very small desk. This helped her developing a more innovative authenticity.
“Expensive materials can be limiting, fashion doesn’t have to be expensive to be valuable, but it really depends on the design. Now that I have a proper workshop with better equipment it’s different: when you work with gold even the tiniest piece can cost 100£, while some stones can cost millions. People may think jewellery is small, or unimportant, but it does have an impact. Whether a piece is expensive or not, coming up with new concepts is time consuming. It’s the concept that is worth the money to me. There has been a conceptual movement away from the traditional in the ’60. There are jewellery museums, Holland, for example, has a very good scene for concept jewellery. It’s also hard to be original nowadays, a lot has been done. You could create something, and then see that somebody did it a week ago. There’s a lot of the copies too, mostly fast fashion brands stealing from independent designers. There’s too much fast fashion in the industry. Big brands can afford to put out rushed pieces, I can’t, I wouldn’t want to put something out that didn’t reflect me. As a small owner I have to deal with everything by myself, and before I made the steps clear people didn’t realise that it can take weeks to send out a single piece, whereas TOPSHOP do next day deliveries.
Originality and integrity play a big role in the fashion industry, so how can young designers stay original and continue to grow their numbers? For Clova, things really changed when, during lockdown, she did a giveaway of one of her pieces that completely blew her page. But numbers are nothing without a solid view. “This might sound trivial, but you really need to believe in what you do. I’m not inspired by anything in particular. I think of something that I would like to wear, and I make it, then new ideas come to me while I make it. All of my pieces are primarily created for myself; this makes it authentic, and people can really connect with it.”
With an extraordinary motivation and a passion for innovation, Clova Rae-Smith is definitely one the industry wants to keep an eye on.