Carou Jewellery — Tides Magazine

In March 2018 Cari put her lifelong dream of being a Creative Director of a jewellery brand on hold, packed up my things and moved from the UK to San Francisco, USA. Before she knew they, her and her financee Pete, had moved countries, changed and lost jobs, and planned a wedding in less than a month (the America visa system does not recognise de facto relationships). Cari explains waking up one morning in a little sun-filled apartment near Alamo Square in San Francisco, and how everything was new. Finding herself at a crossroad in her life, she had a welcome break from the general noise of the everyday and really thought about what she wanted to do. Caris love for jewellery had not faded in the slightest, but her desire to churn out 400 designs a year and sit in back to back meetings all day discussing critical paths and EDMs had. During the following summer, Carou went from a wild little thought in Caris head, to scribbles in a notebook, and finally, to something more tangible.

“I'm from the UK and I worked in the fashion industry in London for 8 years until I left my beloved home in 2012. Up until this point I had done exactly what was expected of an 'emerging designer' in the London fashion scene: working until midnight in the studio every night, schmoozing at fashion events and trying to make my modest salary stretch in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I worked for Burberry Prorsum, Nicole Farhi and Betty Jackson and whilst I loved the creativity and exhilaration of preparing for fashion shows and working with some amazingly talented people in the industry, I started to feel burnt out. I got to a point where I hadn't seen my flatmate for 3 weeks because she was always in bed when I came home from work, and then I got up to leave again before she'd woken up! I needed a seachange and I made the decision to leave London and quit my life as a fashion slave. I went travelling in Asia for 6 months, with Sydney being my last stop. When I arrived in Sydney I had my eyes opened to a whole new way of life... living in a physically beautiful place, going to the beach for a swim after work in the evenings and still being able to live in a vibrant city. I soon found a job working as an assistant designer for a small Australian jewellery brand based in Sydney. I kind of stumbled across the role. I learnt everything I know about jewellery from a crazy talented artisan there who was the best in the business! He taught me all about metal working, soldering, mould making, sculpting. He could make anything and everything by hand and was a true master. He inspired my love of jewellery.”

Wants to minimise travel and be conScious of their eco footprint.

“Working between 3 different countries has its benefits and drawbacks. We hand make our custom engagement and wedding rings with an amazing artisan in the UK, and our mainline is crafted by a local group of makers in Los Angeles. We searched far and wide to source the right fit when we were looking for manufacturers, it was one of the hardest and most time consuming parts of setting up Carou. It took a while to get the right people in place, but now we have, we don't want to lose them. In our first year I had to travel a lot to meet with our teams and I felt like I was living on planes. Now things are more established, we have minimised our travel and of course we are conscious of our eco footprint. If we can communicate over Skype or phone, we do.”

Cari then goes on to explain why being environmentally conscious is so important to her and the brand “our brand is very much inspired by the natural world, so we are always conscious of how we can protect and preserve it. The topic of ‘Sustainable Fashion' is on everyone's lips at the moment. However the term can often feel quite jarring. By its very nature, fashion is ever-changing, it depends on newness and constant creation. So many amazing brands are trying to tackle this issue and are asking themselves the question; ‘how do we create new things every season, whilst not harming the environment?’ We only use manufacturers with an eco-conscious approach, use recycled and biodegradable packaging, and deliver our local orders by bike when we can. We source our stones from ethically approved mines and we never mark down our stock just because it's the 'end of a season'. We don't design jewellery for one specific moment in time, with the intention that it gets pushed to the back of the drawer soon and you buy a new piece to replace it. All our pieces are designed to be worn year after year, and our collections are made to work together, with each one building on top of the previous one. So a necklace from our 3rd collection can be layered with a pendant from our 1st range. We only design 2 small collections per year, and put our heart and soul into every piece. We are not pressured to design something for everybody, in the hope of catching more customers. We are focused on our ethos and message, and hope that will always appeal to our core clients. In addition, we do not participate in the sprawling fashion calendar of wholesaling, which requires a lot of roaming the globe, presenting at tradeshows and showrooms in different countries throughout the year. We collaborate with a few select boutiques that we work with as and when required - we try not to be a slave to the fashion calendar.”

Returned to a Sidney she didn’t recognise.

“The effects of climate change became incredibly real to me in December last year. We had just moved back to Australia and the country had been burning for weeks by the time we arrived. We were hoping for a long, glorious summer as we made our journey home, but we found an apocalyptic sky of fire and smoke. We breathed in hazardous pollution for over 2 months. It was a Sydney I didn't recognise. But what broke my heart was the devastation to the natural world - all the flora and fauna lost in an instance. Seeing this beautiful place on its knees was mighty hard to take.”

Her description of the devastation in Australia after the bush fires was nothing I’d quite been able to imagine myself, images were circulating on social media, but you don’t really grasp it fully unless you’ve experienced it. “As the greenery turned to ash I felt an overwhelming need to plant something. If millions of hectares of plants have died, we'd better grow some more, right? So I went out and bought a load of seeds and I planted them on my tiny balcony. And since Australia only seems to be getting hotter. I thought cacti would be the go. I planted 400 of those little guys, and whilst it didn't put the fires out, it did give me a little solace.”

Cari goes on to say “I've had a life-long love affair with cacti and succulents. I’ve been growing them for years, but this was the first time it felt like a necessity, rather than a nicety. So we found ourselves starting Carou Cactus. It is an attempt to give a little back to nature. We will always try and have an eco-conscious approach towards our jewellery, and hope to continually improve our efforts here. We are so inspired by all the wonderful brands out there leading the charge. But until we find a way to create shiny things with zero impact to the environment, we will be growing green things too!”

Inspired by nature & earthly souvenirs.

We speak about aesthetics and where she seeks inspiration from, Cari continues “we are not defined by a certain aesthetic, as such. For us, it's more about creating a feeling or evoking an emotion. We believe our jewellery should be a reflection on the journeys we take. Our pieces are designed with a soul, a story and most importantly a uniqueness. We create pieces that are hard to find, to be worn with a wild heart. We hope each wearer unearths their own meaning in our jewellery, with their pieces becoming objects of ephemera over time. Our jewellery is inspired by travel and adventure, by far flung lands and earthly souvenirs. We are inspired by nature and mysteries of the world. By romance and relics and a sense of discovery. We love the nuances and imperfections that give everything its own story to tell.”

I always find it interesting knowing how each pieces of jewellery is made, from idea to finished piece, she explains to me, “all of our designs start as a prototype, hand-formed by me. I use metal working, wax and sculpting to create each piece, and play around with them for weeks on end, often putting them down and then revisiting them later with a fresh perspective. I always start with a feeling, a mood, a story. I never know where it will take me or what the final outcome will be. I always design too much, have too many ideas swimming around my head and as I said earlier, we are conscious not to over-produce or create more than the world needs. My husband really helps me edit the designs and distill the collection down to the core, always returning back to the story and the essence behind Carou.”

A strange message from mother nature to us.

When discussing Covid-19 and it’s affect on herself and her business, she says “I think it will slow everything down, and force brands to really consider their output and how they sell it. After living through the worst bushfires in history and witnessing the Australian government refuse to make any real changes to policy on climate change, I feel like this virus is perhaps a strange message from nature to us, is mother earth telling us that we don't look after her by choice, she will force us to? To me, the devastation to flora and fauna from the bushfires was on a completely different scale to the harm Covid-19 has caused to humans; yet the reaction to Covid-19 has been almighty and all-encompassing. I can only hope that once the lockdowns have been lifted and the world's economies fire up again, we do it with a new, paired back perspective. But we all know money talks.”

Cari doesn’t let the pandemic stop her work and creative process though, and tells me that “creatively, it has been amazing! We have designed our new collection and have loved the time to be creative without the usual rush and pressure. It also helped inspire some themes for our new pieces; strength, courage and a sense of protection being key.”

Lucky to be able to weather the storm.

“A lot of people have been reaching out and asking if Carou is still going? Has Covid has shut us down? I think we are lucky to still be small enough to contain the situation and weather the storm. We don't have uncontrollable overheads or long supply chains or lots of employees to support. Before the pandemic, I would have loved to have grown the business to a larger scale and to have expanded our team, whereas now I am so grateful we are small and flexible. Unfortunately we have lost some custom projects over the past weeks due to uncertainty and anxiety, but we have faith these projects will return to us when the chaos has passed. Some might ask what can consumers do to help? Just don’t forget about us! We understand most people are feeling the pinch and aren't shopping right now, but we'd love them to remember us once it's time to go out and enjoy the world again. Saying that, we have some amazingly loyal customers who have continued to buy pieces throughout the crisis, we've had friends sending pieces to loved ones just to brighten up their day. It's really touching to be part of that message.”

Word by Lilja Hrönn. All images by .