DENISE SOLAY’S WORLD IS ON A STRING

By Jeff Prine for the Elite List in Accessories Magazine

From reading the publicity kit on Denise Solay, you imagine a tough talking, rough and tumble character who can bargain with desert nomads, eat sheep’s eyes and ride off into a sand storm on a camel. You know, sort of a female Lawrence of Arabia.

That image is immediately dashed upon seeing Denise, a diminutive figure at 5-feet, 1-inch (and only about 85 pounds). Her hair is pulled tight into a dancer’s bun, a residual of her background as a dancer with England’s Royal Ballet, the Joffery in the U.S. and numerous Broadway musicals. She is graceful and gracious, her sense of style accented by the magnificent jewelry she wears (both her own designs and pieces from her extensive collection of unique, ethnic pieces).

How did a delicate creature such as this get involved in buying and trading jewelry from the Third World and how did she eventually start designing her own collections? “I had been a Ballet Dancer and then a Travel Photographer, so naturally I have a sense of proportion and line. I enjoy traveling to places where you can still see how the world existed before TV and Cell Phones. I studied the cultures of the countries I traveled in and began to understand the importance of jewelry within their daily life. Every time my husband and I went back to a country we saw how quickly the beautiful, old hand craftsmanship was disappearing. How people would melt their old pieces to have them made into something modern. That started me collecting. It wasn’t a big leap from collecting to using some of those old pieces in jewelry I began to design.”

Some of the pieces she uses in her designs are museum quality castings of those old originals. In her travels she also built a very useful network of dealers, traders and artisans who constantly keep her supplied with some of the most exciting contemporary work as well as an occasional rare find. As her literature points out “High in the mountains of China and deep in the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon, miners are even now uncovering beautiful nuggets of Aquamarine, Moonstone, Amethyst, Tourmaline and Calcite.

From the South China Sea divers are harvesting luscious South Sea Pearls and from the Pacific Rim comes Golden Coral and Balinese Freshwater pearls.

In the souks of Marrakech there is a silversmith creating intricate beads based on old Berber traditions.

In her New York studio, Denise Solay gathers these wonderful ingredients and combines them into fantastic works of wearable art, each touched by the artisans and miners and divers magic that inhabits their soul.

Denise’s designs have been featured on the pages of most major fashion publications and in stores throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. They are worn by celebrities and collectors around the world.”

And, I bet Denise is one of the few people who can tell you the best way to get to Timbuktu.