Sustainable jewellery designer disrupts the landscape

Maeve Millwood, rising fashion ambassador interviews Matilde Mozzanega, sustainable jewellery designer who disrupts fashion landscape

Maeve discovers how Matilde has used layered cardboard, to create an award winning and unique sustainable jewellery range.

Maeve Rosemary Millwood, ideaXme's rising fashion ambassador's mission:

I’m on a mission to track down the individuals who move the world of fashion and design forward. I speak to the people who disrupt the landscape in which they work.

Sustainable fashion, jewellery and fabrics

"I have a particular interest in sustainable fashion, this includes sustainable jewellery and fabrics." Maeve Millwood

Interviews with three rising stars, disruptors, who exhibited at Central St Martins Graduate Show 2018

My first ideaXme interviews are with three 2018 Central St Martins Graduates. All designers are focused on producing sustainable products with up-cycling at their core. This sector is a growth area and increasingly explored by both mainstream and burgeoning designers.

New and inventive methods to produce sustainable jewellery

A multitude of beautiful products are produced in this sector employing new and inventive methods. The process used to develop this range involves using cardboard which is worked and polished to reveal its layers.

Sustainable jewellery lessens the impact on our environment, can improve lives of those making and wearing the product and looks great!

My first interview of this series was with sustainable jewellery designer Matilde Mozzanega, pictured here.

Matilde, a Milan native has just graduated from Central St Martins BA in Jewellery Design. She has produced an award-winning collection.  and works with up-cycled industrial cardboard tubing. “I’ve always been interested in creating and making with my hands and working with materials not traditionally used in jewellery making.”

Matilde's sustainable jewellery collection stood out amongst her peers

Matilde’s collection was one of the first I came across during my viewing of Degree Show 2: Design’s 2018 offering. Her pieces stood out not only for their beauty but also because of the little Maison/0 Green Trail marker. The marker noted her as a winner of the award by the same name. Launched for the first time this year, the award highlights the best of the student’s sustainable projects.

A turning point in the industry

The very existence of CSM now denotes a turning point in the industry for sustainability. Young designers who want to pursue and explore this field, that is sustainable design, are encouraged and supported by tutors and the industry from the earliest points of their careers.

Layered cardboard to make sustainable jewellery

Like the layered cardboard from which they are made, Matilde’s pieces reveal themselves the more you learn about them. “It’s the tension between something that is industrially produced and man-made. It is produced with machines and then, through craftsmanship, obtaining something that you could find on the beach or in the woods”.

Found and organic produced in layers

This theme of creating something that appears found and organic runs throughout the collection. “Matilde creates her jewellery in layers. These layers are revealed through the sanding process and polishing stage,  as if there was an organic shape hidden within the material".

Sustainable production methods to produce jewellery

The fluid appearance of the final collection links directly with Matilde’s ethos in its making, “I can never really predict what the shape is going to be like. It is the material that kind of tells me how it is going to be.” Speaking to Matilde I found this lack of rigidity in her approach to design inspiring, it also inadvertently leads to more sustainable production methods. “Usually you make testing pieces.

My tutor advised me to make my sustainable jewellery with another material to test the design

My tutor advised me to make my pieces with MDF, or ceramic first but that didn’t make sense at all. Each piece has its own identity, so creating it with another substance, even as a prototype, would have been absurd to me”.

A low waste and sustainable jewellery collection

 

It has often been humans’ inability to change or adapt that causes the most negative impact when we produce and manufacture.

Flexibility and fluidity

Matilde’s flexibility and fluidity in her processes result in a collection that is low waste and sustainable.

Credits:

ideaXme interview written and researched by Maeve Millwood.

For further interviews in this sustainable fashion series by Maeve Millwood:

Click here:

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Maeve Millwood, ideaXme rising fashion ambassador pictured right:

ideaXme is a podcast, ambassador and mentor programme. Our mission is to Move the human story forward ™ideaXme Ltd. We inspire and support existing and future creators to produce big ideas.

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