My original style icon was and always will be my mother. Her wardrobe wasn't huge. In fact, it was always very considered. She invested in pieces that she wore and wore and wore. And she always looked so effortlessly fabulous. When I think about POETx I think about my mother. I can see her in every piece I have made. Thoughtful, curated and timeless. An ode to my mum.

 

In 2005 I visited New York in September. I was about to turn 35 and earlier that year I had lost my mother to Ovarian Cancer. I remember wandering around a gallery in the Meat Packing District and a jewellery collection caught my eye. Simple pieces etched with script writing. As I read the words on a cuff bracelet I felt like it was my mother speaking to me. The piece was an extract from a letter by Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet. I still wear this bracelet everyday. 

  

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”