{"id":36387,"date":"2017-05-17T13:37:23","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T17:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=36387"},"modified":"2017-05-17T13:52:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T17:52:56","slug":"wendy-brandes-jewelry-in-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/wendy-brandes-jewelry-in-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Brandes Jewelry in the New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to super-cool journalist Rachel Garrahan for including me in her New York Times article called “In a Time of Stress, Jewelry Becomes Armor”<\/a>! It’s about how women are gravitating towards jewelry that makes them feel strong … and it just so happens that the concept of female strength is at the very heart of all of my jewelry designs. I love the headline too, as you might guess if you’ve been on my Facebook page<\/a> in the past couple of months: I literally <\/a>have “feminist armor” in my cover image.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My 18K gold jewelry has always been inspired by the stories of real-life, powerful women. The pieces are meant to make the wearer feel like a “warrior woman<\/a>,” as jewelry blogger Becky Stone once put it.<\/p>\n

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My Matilda sword earrings will remind you to fight for yourself!<\/p><\/div>\n

Many of the gold designs have a story linked to an individual woman, like this swan ring named for Anne of Cleves, the savvy fourth wife of Henry VIII<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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18K gold with black diamonds. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

But a direct connection to the biography of a particular queen isn’t always required. The rings in my “Maneater<\/a>” collection tackle the topic of power more generally (though as a group they were influenced by Empress Wu<\/a>, the only female Chinese ruler to use the title of “emperor” during her lifetime). Each Maneater has a bejeweled creature looming over the tiny hidden figure of a man.<\/p>\n

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A black diamond bull stands triumphant over a tiny, hidden matador in this Maneater ring.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, I consider a New York City taxi<\/a> to be a creature.<\/p>\n

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The Taxi Maneater has a little businessman hidden in the shank.<\/p><\/div>\n

I create the jewelry named for queens and other badass ladies in blackened 18K yellow gold with a satin finish. Using matte, oxidized gold gives the pieces additional depth and complexity. When I started adding more silver pieces to my line in 2008, I realized that doing such intricate work wasn’t right for the material. The labor costs were the same, making the pieces very expensive for silver, and the designs really need gold’s warmth. As a result, I decided I would give my silver collection its own look — more playful, more modern, and more explicit in its messaging.\u00a0 I started with my infamous swear rings<\/a>, then added emojis<\/a> and word\/acronym jewelry<\/a>. With the word jewelry, my background in journalism often led me to “breaking news” in pop culture — the latest nickname for a loved one<\/a>, for instance.\u00a0 After the election in November, my mind turned to politics, and so did the silver jewelry.<\/p>\n

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Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

As Rachel reported in the Times:<\/p>\n

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Click for Rachel’s full story.<\/p><\/div>\n

She continued:<\/p>\n

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So, as you can see, I tell it like it is when I work in silver …<\/p>\n

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New silver signet ring. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

… and I save the elaborate historical references with their more subtle messages of strength for oxidized 18K gold.<\/p>\n

To answer a few questions you might have:<\/p>\n