House of Brands (HOB) distributes the range in Australia and New Zealand and its founder, former Pandora Australia president Karin Adcock, hosted the private function in Sydney last night (Monday 14 October).
Guests from a number of fashion and trade media were treated to a champagne reception and a creative master-class that explored the jewellery concept that has been dubbed “the next revolution in personalised jewellery”.
Adcock told Jeweller that introducing the jewellery range to the media was an important part of HOB’s strategy to support retailers.
“A key objective of the evening was to familiarise target media with the X by Trollbeads concept so that it is top-of-mind for inclusion in future editorial and photo shoots,” she explained.
As previously reported by Jeweller, X by Trollbeads allows wearers to create their own unique bracelets or necklaces from a range of different interchangeable links.
Trollbeads founder Lise Aagaard developed the concept and each link – available in silver, bronze, gold and black rubber – has an X-shaped, bevelled connection that enables it to connect to other links with a simple twist.
Adcock said the reaction from guests was extremely positive. “They were intrigued by the raw elegance of X by Trollbeads, the concept of creating something completely personal and unique that reflected their own story.”
The range was released globally on 17 September, with an official trade launch held in Copenhagen, Demark – the location of Trollbeads’ head office.
Prior to the worldwide release, HOB “secretly” unveiled the range to a select number of potential stockists last month during the Sydney jewellery fair. At the time, Adcock told Jeweller that there had been a strong uptake of the line from retailers during the show as well as the week following.
X by Trollbeads has quickly gained more than 50 local stockists.
Last night’s event was also attended by one of the lead designers for new brand, Tomas Cenius. He is said to have “wowed guests” with an engaging presentation outlining the background of the design process for X by Trollbeads, followed by a creative dance and drawing performance.
Tomas Cenius, X by Trollbeads designer
Tomas Cenius, one of the chosen nine X by Trollbeads designers, was invited to the Australian launch. He is responsible for creating Chinese Zodiac designs and, as a self-taught designer, has created jewellery for Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary.
Having worked with Trollbeads founder Lise Aagaard for nearly 25 years, he says, “It’s been thrilling to work with her (Aagaard) because it’s always been interesting the way they are open with what you can do and how you can design these small jewellery pieces.
“So when Lise told me she was going to design a new range and took me aside and explained that she’d been working on an idea about a bracelet [since] she was a young girl, I thought it was such a great concept. It’s so simple and easy.”
Cenius said at first he was very excited after learning about the new concept but then got frustrated with the design process that was required to bring it all together within the X-link concept. But, he explained, “Then I designed the monkey and it started to take shape.
“All the time I have worked with jewellery I’ve tried to use the [piece’s] outside to give the design some depth, to make it look deeper than it is. The aim is to give the jewellery some character and I realised that I could do that with X and make the eyes look deeper by using small stones,” Cenius said.
He added that the beauty of the X by Trollbeads collection is in its customisation; the way the pieces have a personality, creativity and style of their own, and can be worn either as stand-alone items or alongside others.
“My goal is to make bold, stylish jewellery that touches people. I give the same attention to every piece, whether it is for the Royal Couple or the lady next door."
Aagaard contracted nine designers to launch X by Trollbeads and each designer didn’t know how many others there were, let alone who they were. The group of nine was chosen to give a wide range of design influence.
Before his new designs began to take shape, Cenius considered what subjects he would focus on and, inspired by his love of Chinese culture and his adopted Chinese daughter, he chose the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.
Cenius said he rarely thinks about target audience, age groups and demographics when designing, he just concentrates on the creative process.
“To be honest, I usually design what I like and how I think it will best look so I don’t normally think about customer demographics. But when I learned about the new concept, yes, I thought it would be a little younger than the traditional Trollbeads audience, because it’s new and has this black rubber edge to it.”
X BY TROLLBEADS LAUNCH PHOTOS
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