It’s totally tubular and bodacious: Inspired by the colors, music, and energy of the 1980s, Robinson Pelham has come out with jewelry collections that would give any Valley Girl the look of today.
These collections epitomize Robinson Pelham’s efforts to honor its iconic designs, use recycled materials, and breathe new life into gemstones that otherwise might languish in its vaults, says Vanessa Chilton, creative director for British fine jeweler.
“Jewelry is cyclical in nature. There is always an opportunity to source inspiration because of the rich history and storytelling behind each period and reinvent it. This is something we are constantly doing at RP,” Chilton says.
Making something old new again is what Robinson Pelham founders Chilton, Kate Pelham Burn, and Zoe Benyon have aimed to do from the time they created the brand 27 years ago, Chilton says. It helps that today’s young people, including Gen Z, are fascinated by 1980s and ’90s trends like bright colors and maximalism.
“We are a relatively young brand but fortunate to be able to access our archives, make edits, or updates,” Chilton says. “We want to acknowledge the jewelry that has made an impact and especially reinforce the collections that our clients love, but this time we are taking what we have learned and doing it even better.
“As women who were coming of age in the ’80s, we are definitely always looking to this era when designing,” Chilton adds. “It’s been a lot of fun seeing the customer who both originally wore something and who is being introduced to it for the first time love it equally.”
The collections Robinson Pelham introduced this summer include Stereo, an ode to music and how people listened to it back in the 1980s. Its barrel-shaped pendants are set with gemstones representing the play, pause, stop, and record buttons on a cassette tape player. The barrel swivels, allowing the wearer to turn it as they pause, reflect, and embrace life’s rhythm, Chilton says.
Stereo is special because it came out of Robinson Pelham’s partnership with Turquoise Mountain, a charity founded by King Charles III in 2006 to revive historic crafts and work with artisans in areas such as Myanmar and the Middle East.
Another new collection, Totem, uses gemstones from Robinson Pelham’s vaults in elongated earrings. One pair features round Persian turquoise cabochons; another, rainbow-colored sapphires and tsavorites, including green to match this year’s brat summer trend.
The line called Fruits of Love brings the brand’s Aspen collection, which debuted in 2013, forward to 2024. Its large, statement earrings, in such shapes as hearts, apples, and pears, are adorned with diamonds, peridots, and tsavorites.
Each earring in a pair is designed for the left or right ear: The stalk hanging from the ear is angled away from the face, for a sweeping movement from the earlobe toward the top of the ear that elevates the eye line and flatters the cheekbones, Chilton says.
Robinson Pelham‘s Daystar collection consists of earrings modeled after a Georgian shield, a favorite design of the brand’s founders. Every earring has two central double-cut stones: a slim, elegant half moon and the drop shield, shapes exclusively cut for Robinson Pelham. Daystar earrings are available with gems of various colors, including diamonds or blue topaz.
Finally, Robinson Pelham is introducing Wish charms that can be put on its 15- and 16-inch gold chain necklaces. The charms, in shapes including bolts, daggers, doves, and padlocks, originally were made as EarWish charms, to hang from Robinson Pelham Orb hoops.
Top: Robinson Pelham’s 14k gold Daystar earrings with citrine, yellow sapphires, and diamonds, $6,600 (photos courtesy of Robinson Pelham)
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