Our history.
A bit about Carousel Jewels, si vous voulez.
Let's go...
It started with an idea.
Five years ago, after a few years of working in the fashion industry, I started a small boutique jewellery brand. I wanted to give women a meaningful jewellery option that made them feel confident and that helped them manifest their best selves.
When I watched films from my grandparents' time - Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Laurence of Arabia - I just loved those stories of romance, travel and history. This was the founding concept behind Carousel Jewels: modern jewellery that takes us back.
I read widely on the designs of the past. In particular, Hugh Tait's 7,000 Years of Jewellery became my bible. I studied the jewellery of the Romans and the Victorians, of the modernists and the post-modernists.
I looked for small producers who employed artisans - people who learned to make jewellery through tradition, who had generational knowledge. People who could create magic with their hands.
I thought so much about the aesthetics of the past - why do we always return to them? I thought about different stones and their meanings in history - where did those meanings come from, what was their source?
I grew a small team of hard working heroes - open-minded friends who held values about ecological and business ethics. I learned from them, and especially, I learned about the technology of moving a brand online - which definitely was never my strong point!
We started getting press opportunities in publications like Vogue, The Independent and Grazia. Then our designs were spotted by the costume team at Bridgerton, and our pieces ended up featuring in the Netflix hit show. Things were starting to happen.
At the heart of what we do is a commitment to small batch production with a slow fashion mindset. When launching a new style, we will only make it in a small quantity to gauge demand first. We don't want to overproduce anything that there isn't a demand for. This may mean that styles go on pre-order regularly, but I promise, your jewellery will be worth the wait!
Most of all, we love knowing that more than ten thousand women wear our unique first-edition pieces... and that more than half of our customers love their jewellery so much that they come back for more.
So get in touch with us on Instagram or by email. We're still small enough for me to pick up many great conversations with customers myself. If there's something you'd like to know about an individual piece - who made it, what its meaning is, how we designed it, how it impacts the planet - just ask.
There's a lot of hard work in what we do, but there are three simple principles we always come back to: that jewellery should be designed ethically, it should be handcrafted beautifully by artisans, and it should transport us to places of romance and adventure.
Yours,
Sally Louise
Founder and designer