In the Studio with Jeanette Thomas of Moratorium

Jeanette Thomas rides a motorbike, owns an enormous dog, and designs jewelry. So, yeah, we wanted to visit her studio! Sadly, Baron, Jeanette's mastiff, wasn't home when Brayden and I stopped by her Brooklyn apartment, but we did get to see Jeanette working on the pieces for the second collection of her jewelry line, Moratorium. “A lot of the guys in the diamond district don’t want to produce my work because it’s so labor-intensive,” she explained. Jeanette's technique involves hollowing out 3-D shapes to create intricate geometric structures. Each piece is then polished by hand to give it a super high-shine finish. The resulting pyramid necklaces, rings, and earrings are currently sold exclusively at OC, and we couldn't be more excited!

Jeanette was born in Hong Kong but moved to New York when she was 18. Since then, she's continued to travel, with her husband (and with Baron), and started taking silversmithing classes with a friend during a trip to Amsterdam. For three hours a week, she learned the basics and then began teaching herself. “Soon people started asking me to make things and I thought Whoa, this could be serious!” What's the weirdest thing anyone's ever asked her to make, I asked? "I went backstage at a show by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Orlando [Higginbottom, the British music producer] said he would love a breastplate!" For next season, Jeanette told us she wants to keep the Moratorium aesthetic the same but produce bigger pieces. So watch this space for breastplates.

Shop all Moratorium here.

Photos by Brayden Olson