Known for her enamel-coated whirls and candy-coloured gemstones reminiscent of a Wonka-esque wonderland, Bea Bongiasca’s jewellery is, at a glance, cute, childlike, and even saccharine. The designer is anything but. In fast-paced staccato, the 33-year-old’s words tumble out, punctuated by animated gestures, eye rolls, and the occasional expletive. She’s not as Nickelodeon-friendly as her pinked-out boutique in Milan, but she is playful, vibrant, and expressive. Most of all, she is a talented jewellery designer who fearlessly bares her whimsical soul with every creation.
Photo: Bea Bongiasca.
So obvious was Bongiasca’s gift for jewellery-making that her Central Saint Martins teachers urged her parents to invest in her. “They told my parents that if they could afford it, it would be better for me to create my brand. They were worried that I would get influenced if I joined a jewellery house because they felt my work was unique,” she says. “I won many awards at school and graduated with honours, so my parents were convinced.”
With their help, Bongiasca launched her eponymous brand within a year of graduation. Today, a decade later, her collections are a veritable garden of delights that has grown to include fine jewellery adorned with coloured gemstones and diamonds.
But as any business owner knows, passion and skill don’t guarantee success. Bongiasca’s niche—somewhere between fashion and fine jewellery—made it difficult to find stores willing to stock her products. “‘You don’t fit anywhere. We don’t know where to put you,’ they said. They were close-minded. It took about five years before things worked.” Ironically, it was after she ignored retailers who told her enamel—her signature material—made her designs look like cheap fashion jewellery.
“I brought it back because it was who I was as a designer, and I was trying to be more consistent with the collections,” she says, referring to her bestselling You’re So Vine! pieces and how she liked the narrative of “contaminating” precious metal plants with colour, resulting in a non-traditional jewel. “I also started working in the US a lot more, set up a showroom there, and went to all the right fairs.” In October 2019, she opened her boutique, which she proudly describes as “really cute”. It really is.
“If you pretend to be something you’re not, it will not happen. There are a lot of designers swayed by trends, but you can’t keep that up. I can think of a few jewellers who do boring stuff with diamonds and gold, but decide one day that they like enamel and coloured stones. And I’m like, ‘Excuse me, lady, what are you about? Where is this coming from?’”
Not that Bongiasca is against experimentation. “I think it’s more of a refinement. You start off raw, untamed, naive, and over time, you stay on track.” Her upcoming collection, in stores this September, will include chunky rings, a style she hasn’t tried before.
Celebrity devotees include Gigi Hadid, Selena Gomez, Blackpink’s Lisa, Dua Lipa, and more, while close to 90,000 fans follow her Instagram’s toothsome feed. Bongiasca admits to being regularly flooded with messages and emails from young, would-be designers asking to meet for advice, but she cautions against choosing this path on a whim.
“It’s not just something that occurs to you when you’re 25 or 30. Design should have been something you were always good at. It’s not fair to people like us who went to school, won competitions, and worked on projects. We are really dedicated, so it diminishes it a little when people think they can just start their own brand,” she says.
“Some people worked in banks and ended up opening bakeries, but they’ve probably loved baking and have been doing it their whole lives. The ones I know who are successful with their brands have always been passionate and dedicated. It was never an afterthought.”
For Bongiasca, that devotion is likely to endure indefinitely. Her recent collection of alphabet pendants was a way to push herself out of her comfort zone. “Letters are a traditional thing in jewellery, but they always look similar. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do something different,” she says. She may even work with pearls, a material she has little affinity for, some day. For her, there’s always something more to do, always something to improve.
The brand’s message and the designer’s intention will remain constant wherever her experiments take her. “Traditional jewellery likes to have links to families and loved ones, but I want people to buy my jewellery for themselves. And because you want to have something a little light-hearted, different, and crazy. It gives you happiness to look at it because it’s escapism from the stresses of life.”
