Solange Azagury-Partridge's [not] Swedish candy…

…but toys for grown ups!

She is the iconoclastic designer that blew the dust off fine jewellery. With a never before seen design ingenuity, almost sacrilegious, Solange Azagury-Partridge is the queen of modern jewellery.

The jewellery pieces, with their unique design philosophy and symbolism, from British jewellery designer Solange Azagury-Partridge is like nothing else. Like if high quality jewels colour-exploded in a pop art exhibition. Avant garde but still with a classic but bold base, if any of that makes any sense.

For thirty-five years Solange Azagury-Partridge has had an immense impact on today’s jewellery-making and her creations are of the kind which jewellery historians will mention in a hundreds years from now. Innovative and children of their time in the same way we now look upon the pieces that came out of such designers as Jean Fouquet or Suzanne Belperron. No wonder her jewellery is featured in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and at Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre in Paris.

Subscribe now

Colour

Solange Azagury-Partridge says she always had a love affair with colour and that she want to make sure never to ignore it in her designs. That colour itself, whether by way of enamel, lacquer or gemstones, makes them inventive and meaningful.

And with her favourite colour green, she always “struggle”.

“Green is the color that I need. I seem to be wearing a lot of green as well these days. Whenever I design a piece of jewellery my initial tendency is to make it emerald, I have to force myself not to use green.”

What’s the deal

Already in 1997 Solange Azagury-Partridge told The Independent: “Jewellery should shout, it is there to make you feel special, so I’ve always made jewellery which will be noticed. There’s not much point spending over pounds l,000 on a piece of jewellery if you’re not going to shout about it.”

London-born she studied French and Spanish and set up her business, Solange, in 1995. After creating her own engagement ring in 1987 (a dome ring in gold with an uncut octahedral diamond set off-centre) she started working, without formal training, for the costume jewellers Butler & Wilson and then for the art and jewellery dealer Gordon Watson.

In 2001 Tom Ford and the Parisian jewellery firm Boucheron called to make her Creative Director. She stayed until 2004, when she went back to concentrate on her own brand and company. During the years at Boucheron she, for example, created the still best selling collection Quatre (build on her Mish Mash collection) and Not Bourgeois.

In 2008, Solange Azagury-Partridge sold her brand to luxury conglomerate Labelux, but bought the company back in 2012, realising going “mega-brand” was not for her.
Today her shops are fewer but she can interact with customers and concentrate on designing. In recent years her Hotlips by Solange designs has been spun off as a brand of its own in a separate business.

Subscribe now

Diamond in the rough

For Solange Azagury-Partridge diamonds seem to be more about what they can give the shape of the jewellery piece rather than their size. Azagury-Partridge has also said that she prefers the spread of them rather than their depth.

All of Azagury-Partridge’s jewellery is full of cultural references and when it comes to the stones she uses, they are there to tell a story, express ideas and they inhabit such bigger purpose than to simply adorn a potential wearer.

Or as she told The Independent in 2012: “I always say, if you can send a man to the moon, you can make a piece of jewellery. I’m not gem-focused, which a lot of jewellers are. I like to design what I want to design and then squeeze the stones into it. So it becomes a nightmare of not only making the jewel, but cutting stones, sourcing colours, whatever.”

Solange Azagury-Partridge’s first collection Uncut Gems, in 1997, featured silver designs with uncut gemstones because she simply could not afford gold in those early days. However, uncut diamonds and other rough-cut gem stones are something that still sprinkle her unusual design paths. She has said that even though they have a different appeal; more chaotic, less ordered with a warrior-like toughness; they are no less beautiful.

“I do like when my diamonds don’t necessarily look like diamonds. An uncut diamond looks like a lump of nothing.”

And there’s so much more

Solange Azagury-Partridge’s creativity has also resulted in perfumes in collaboration with the perfumer Lyn Harris, interior design projects like her stores, LED Murano lights and short films.
She has during the years supported different charities like when she, in 2014, partnered with Topshop and created a jewellery collection with pieces that symbolized female empowerment and supported the Eliminate Domestic Violence charity.

In 2021, Azagury-Partridge served as a judge on the BBC2 television program All That Glitters: Britain’s Next Jewellery Star where she, along side other judges, evaluated the contestants’ creations.

More curious about the iconic Solange Azagury-Partridge’s cheeky, neon pink, green and banana yellow, whimsically unique fine jewellery aesthetic!?
Watch this interview or why not invest in the coffee table book Solange: Jewellery for Chromantics (published by Rizzoli New York in 2024) where you find more information about Solange Azagury-Partridge’s more than 20 jewellery collections.