Inspirational Design Versus Aspirational Design: Creating Wearable Works of Art that Work for You
A primary part of our design consultations involves working with clients to interpret their own design preferences and develop a plan for a piece of jewelry that fits their aesthetic. Often, we start from a very bird's-eye view of the aesthetic vision, meaning we’re pulling from architectural or print inspiration. Viewing other works of jewelry are helpful too, but understanding the scale of a piece can be challenging when viewing references online. This is where I try to break down the difference between inspirational design versus aspirational design for clients, and the distinction is helpful for understanding how your final piece will work for you.
Inspirational design (to me) uses references that are to scale and are attune to the lifestyle needs of the ultimate designed piece. Simply put, if you are making an engagement ring then you are looking at other engagement rings with a similar size to what you want for yourself as design reference. Aspirational design, on the other hand, is more helpful for understanding what the tweens call the “vibe” of the piece you want to make. For example, you love Art Deco lines, you love the visual impact of stunning Art Deco jewelry and you love the drama and history of the era - these are aspirational elements, and I would pull photos of period-designed buildings, dresses, and stunning works by Cartier as my aspirational references. At the same time, you want to make something that will be wearable every day in your own modern life, so I would pull images of actual rings that have the correct scale to what I want to wear on my hand. Often, these elements can be a bit at conflict with one another because there is only so much room (or budget) to include certain aesthetic elements from more aspirational works, so being able to scale these down to a reasonable, wearable piece of jewelry for you can take some finessing to get just right.
Inspirational v. Aspirational: Antique Art Deco
The photos on the left show terrific inspiration photos of rings we have made in our shop, helping the client to understand how to scale down the more ornate, large, or decorated items on the right-hand side.
The unifying elements between the themes include linear, ray-like displays of gemstones, inclusions of color, glassy step cuts, and strong geometric lines. Scaling this style to an everyday ring usually means that you need to either use a fairly large center stone in order to provide enough space for a custom-cut halo like what is shown in the Alx&Co., diamond and sapphire ring, or you will need to consider a more streamlined approach with a more horizontal layout.
Makers of Note:
Cartier
Rubel Freres
Leopoldo Janesich
It is only natural that the very best representations of particular aesthetic eras tend to be found in very large, very elaborate designs that would have been high specialty-occasion items at the time they were made. If a client was commissioning fine jewelry, it would have been (1) someone very wealthy to be able to afford it and (2) they would have wanted it for the explicit purpose of showing it off at formal events. These people were not concerned about long-term wearability, durability, or practicality, which is usually the opposite of what clients today are looking for out of their custom pieces. So, while we can certainly pull aesthetic elements from these gorgeous works of art, they also need to be viewed from an entirely different lens.
If you haven’t already read our post discussing Period & Artistic Terminology in Jewelry Design, I encourage you to take a look in order to familiarize yourself with some of the ways artistic movements have evolved through time. Jewelry is just one of many aesthetic media that portray a particular mood or theme of a time, and it’s useful to understand the context in which some of these influences arose. Here, I break down the ways in which these periods are depicted in aspirational high fine jewelry, paired next to how those are translated to inspirational custom pieces, designed and crafted here at Alx&Co.
Belle Epoch - Antique Edwardian
This period of the early 1900’s encompassed beautifully feminine, architecturally-referential lines that evoked ancient Roman classical elegance with a layer of royal-European formality. Bows, arches, filigree, engraving, and soft lines define the jewelry of the era, with plenty of diamonds employed alongside sapphires, pearls, and other gems.
Makers of Note:
Tiffany & Co.
Chaumet
Cartier
Art Nouveau
A contrast to the formal, man-made lines of the Belle Epoch-Edwardian aesthetic, Art Nouveau pieces are grounded in the natural world. Carved forms, warm textures and color tones, colored gems, and organic shapes created enchanting pieces that exhibited an entirely novel take on fine jewelry decoration. This period is often best referenced with carved, yellow gold structural lines, organic shapes, and a touch of color in the pieces. Because of the level of intricate craft and design in each piece, Art Nouveau works of art were often quite large so scaling them down while maintaining the defining traits can be a design challenge.
Makers of Note:
Henri Vever
Georges Fouquet
Paul Brandt
Artistic Boheme
In the 60’s and 70’s Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier were both acclaimed for generating stunning collections of bohemian/Southeast Asian-inspired design that referenced organic shapes, floral motifs, and plenty of color. These designs had a distinctively playful tone to them, but they remained elegant in their presentation. Scaling down this look usually entails employing a single strong gemstone color or playing with ombre hues instead of contrasting colors, and usually pear cuts or marquise-shaped gems are utilized to provide that distinctive floral-inspired look.
Makers of Note:
Cartier
Van Cleef & Arpels
Modern Tradition
Modern tradition pulls the best structural aesthetics from periods past but lends a more streamlined eye to the vision, resulting in grounded design that is still bold and impactful. We see stronger shapes used, along with sculpted forms, deep gemstone colors, and a focus on overall balance in the design. These designs can sometimes run a bit weighty, so scaling this down can mean thinning a band or scaling down a center stone a bit.
Makers of Note:
Chopard
Van Cleef & Arpels
Bulgari
Boucheron
Practical Minimalism
Practical Minimalism as a moniker of jewelry design is a bit of a misnomer because there is truthfully nothing practical about using stunningly large gemstones in fine jewelry. That being said, the look is decidedly bare-bones in the sense that the fabulous gemstone - usually a large diamond or gemstone - serves as the centerpiece with minimal detailing applied to the piece otherwise. Bold, fancy shapes may be used in the case of the marquise Chopard ring shown here, or perhaps a splash of an elegant emerald color in an otherwise extremely simplistic design like the emerald and diamond Tiffany earrings. The focus is entirely on the stones rather than on the design of the piece - a deceptively simplistic design that is actually quite tricky to pull off (the piece must be absolutely perfect to be right!)
Makers of Note:
Chopard
Tiffany & Co.
Bulgari
Your own design preferences might not fall exactly within one of these referenced aesthetic periods, but you can probably still perform this exercise on your own. By searching for both the aspirational and the inspirational elements of your design, you can help your Design Lead better understand your overall vision for your custom piece - and, you’ll hopefully gain a better grounding for what is possible for your own lifestyle. Remember, when you are searching online often it is the largest, most visually impactful pieces that will jump out to you and these are often significantly bigger than what you might find reasonable to wear every day. Working with a Design Lead at Alx&Co. will help you understand how to successfully translate this aesthetic into reality.
