Chain Gang

A pic of my editorial- 'I'm with the band'

London-based Swedish designer, Fannie Schiavoni, is the go to jewellery designer at the moment, if you want to wear accessories that will make you stand out from the herd. In fact her original signature ‘fierce-rocious’ accessories (which are made solely out of gun metal chains) are so fabulous that they can be worn with pretty much nothing else, as Rihanna shows in her latest ‘Rockstar 101’ video. In this video we can see Rihanna writhing around ‘dressed in’ black body paint, Fannie Schiavoni chains and a sexy snarl-Oooh la la, tres scandalous!

There is something about these striking armour-esque pieces that makes the wearer want to strip down to the barest minimum to show off the accessories to the ultimate maximum. Lady Gaga certainly seemed to think so; in ‘Q’ magazine’s April issue, Gaga chose to wear lashings of Fannie Schiavoni jewellery on top of her bare skin and her rock star look was punctuated with black tight trousers that had spiky detailing to boot.

I have to give myself props for cottoning on to this trend last year when I was invited to the showroom of the Pr Company that carries Fannie Schiavoni’s designs. At the time I was prepping to do a fashion story that I wanted to call, ‘I’m with the band’ and I wanted the styling to have a very ‘when Alice Dellal & Pixie Geldoff joined forces to start their own rock band’ feel to it. And so when I saw the detailed craftsmanship that had gone into fashioning these chains into various unique creations like- bra pieces, draped harnesses, shoulder pieces, gloves, necklaces, chain link cage dresses (yes please!) and wrist chains- I knew that they would take centre stage in my story. When I’m working, it is these moments that give me an ultra sugar-high rush because I begin to see the pieces that will take my creative vision into reality and then some.

Anyhoo back to Fannie- considering her debut collection came out only last year, she really has done well in creating the right kind of buzz for her work (and it’s no wonder that she is assisting Rihanna’s creative director for her ‘Russian Roulette’ tour) and I can’t wait to see and use more of her collections in the future. Rock on.