18 November 2024 |
Photographer GREG KESSLER
Sittings Editor IMAN DABBOUS
Photographer’s assistant JACKSON VERGES
The jewelry designer Ana Khouri’s rarefied pieces are more objets d’art than accessories—and have created a cult following among fashion’s most discerning crowd.
My first impression of Ana Khouri is that she’s a woman who knows what she wants. At 43, the rather elusive Brazilian-born, New York City-based jeweler is carving out a space within which high adornment and art converge.
When I meet the designer at her top-floor apartment in Mayfair, London (she shuttles between this and an apartment in New York, as well as ateliers in Paris and Zurich), I immediately notice there’s an air of intensity about her. Between juggling business meetings and an appointment with one of her most prominent clients, she still finds the time to sit for our shoot, where she models new clothing designs by Hermès, Toteme, and Khaite, as well as her own pieces from The Row and Saint Laurent.
Romantic. Dramatic. Artful. These are some of the adjectives used to describe her sumptuous jewelry designs, which have garnered her a cult following among a rarefied crowd in fashion. Khouri has an innate sense of what the modern woman wants to wear when it comes to jewelry—which is no small feat, as these choices become perhaps the most personal items in a woman’s wardrobe. “Wearing jewelry is all about self-love,” Khouri says.
Khouri started her career as a sculptor. She earned a degree in fine arts from the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado art school in São Paulo. But it was after she created works for a show about body ornamentation that she moved from sculpture to jewelry. “I put on this show where these naked women had these huge steel sculptures around their bodies,” she recalls. “For me it was all about the masculine and the feminine, the warmth of the body and the coldness of the steel, and how the body, the skin, would take that in.” But then someone suggested she reduce the large steel sculptures to a smaller scale so that people could wear them. At first Khouri was opposed to the idea. “[I thought] I wouldn’t know how to make jewelry,” she recalls. “I would have to study functionality, because there’s no functionality involved in art and sculpture.” But soon enough she tried her hand at smaller designs and “fell in love with the art of making jewelry.” In 2013, she officially launched her namesake brand.
blazer, pants, and shoes by THE ROW, necklace with South Sea pearls and Brazilian rosewood, Raw ring with diamonds, and Raw Ring by ANA KHOURI
Christina earrings with diamonds by ANA KHOURI
top and skirt by TOTEME, Phillipa ear cuff with diamond, Raw ear cuff with diamonds, and Phillipa ring by ANA KHOURI
Even today, all her designs start with an idea of a sculpture. “I don’t start drafting or drawing,” Khouri says. “I come up with a sculpture first, because then I know the shape and form I want to work with. Then I go to the bench and I start adding the functionality.” Many of her ideas come from nature, having grown up in São Paulo before moving to Florida at the age of 10. She spent her time both surfing and on her family farm in Brazil, and her South American heritage remains integral to her practice. “I was raised in a home that was 20 minutes away from our farm, so every weekend I was climbing trees and running around the green fields with the horses,” she says. “I learned to respect nature at a really young age, and I learned to love being around it.” Khouri sees beauty in raw, natural forms and is drawn to working with fair-trade materials like 18-carat Fairmined gold from the Amazon, pink quartz, jarina seeds, Brazilian rosewood (carved out of vintage furniture), pearls, and crystals, to name a few. “Nature is as close to the truth as we can get,” Khouri says.
This idea resonates with her clients, who appreciate the high level of detail and technical complexity of her one-of-a-kind pieces, as well as her slow and considered hand-crafted production. It’s clear from the deep respect Khouri has for her materials that she cares about the planet. There is also a respect for people—she makes certain her employees are paid fairly and work in safe conditions. “Brazil is a melting pot of every immigrant from every country, so I learned to respect other ethnicities, other cultures,” she says. “I think a lot of Brazilians do. We all live together as one.” It’s just another reason clients should feel good about wearing her exquisite designs.
blazer and pants by THE ROW, shoes by CHARVET, Phillipa ring with South Sea pearl and crystal by ANA KHOURI
Constantino minaudière in Brazilian rosewood and 18-carat Fairmined gold, Phillipa bracelet with tourmaline, diamonds, and crystal, Raw ring, Raw ring with diamonds, and Phillipa ring with South Sea pearl and crystal by ANA KHOURI
The woman who is drawn to her pieces, Khouri says, is also drawn to art. “My client, she understands the way I work,” she says. “She’s not just buying a piece of jewelry, she’s buying the work of an artist—not to boast her wealth, but to appreciate the materials and design used to create it.” Her creations cannot be found in any jewelry house, nor can they be copied. “It’s too intricate,” she adds. “It’s how you cut the crystal. It’s how you meet the diamonds with the rosewood that you carve out of old furniture because it can’t be found anywhere else because it’s protected.” Khouri has a knack for mixing unexpected materials, sourced from the most exotic places and then transforming them into something otherworldly while maintaining an appreciation for the heritage of high jewelry craftsmanship. It’s why she displays her pieces—usually only about 25 or 30—at high end art and design fairs like TEFAF in New York and at Christie’s in Paris. Her pieces can be viewed exclusively at her by-appointment atelier in New York, while her “few of a kind” edition pieces are carried and available on a first-come-first-served basis at The Row shops worldwide. She’s the only person to have worked with the label in this way. Except for The Row, Khouri doesn’t sell in stores or follow the fashion calendar, because she has never been about commercializing. “I’m not building a jewelry brand,” she declares. “I’m doing this because I fell in love with the art of jewelry making and how a material can bend to my vision.”
Clients are usually kept on waiting lists. “It takes time to create these things. I am not going to just start making 100 pieces a year to sell more, because then they’re not going to be as special,” Khouri says. “I refuse to do that.” The client understands this, because that is what they’re after: the pure genius of Khouri’s creations. “And they fight for it,” she says with a laugh. “Even the celebrities can’t get it.”
dress by ALEX RIVIERE STUDIO, Phillipa bracelet with tourmaline, diamonds, and crystal and Tea ring with tourmaline, diamonds, and crystal by ANA KHOURI
jacket by CHANEL, dress by THE ROW, Constantino minaudière in Brazilian rosewood and 18-carat Fairmined gold, Raw ring with diamonds, and Raw ring by ANA KHOURI
Phillipa ring with South Sea pearl and crystal and Phillipa bracelet with rubellite, diamonds, and crystal by ANA KHOURI
dress by THE ROW, raw necklace with diamond and Brazilian rosewood by ANA KHOURI
dress by SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO, Raw bracelets by ANA KHOURI
