annie costello brown
picture credit: nyadorned.com
Raised on a houseboat in Sausalito, California by her artist parents, Annie Costello Brown’s upbringing was untraditional. Her father is a musician, while her mother, trained in metalsmithing, crafted jewelry when Costello was young. At the old Marin City Flea Market she learned to hunt for treasures, take them home, take them apart and put them back together in her own way. "From then on, I was always working for jewelry designers as after school jobs or, as I got older, across the ocean in Bali and then here in downtown L.A."
After graduation from the San Francisco Art Institute she settled in Los Angeles where she spent several years honing her leatherworking skills working for accessories company Billykirk. “My plan was to be an artist, literally a painter, and I still consider myself an artist,” Costello noted. When Billykirk moved operations to New York, Costello Brown said she knew it was time to strike out on her own. Her aesthetic, she says, has refined over time, though her drive has always been to make pieces that she personally loves.
Costello Brown designs and makes the collection out of her Echo Park home, where four to five craftswomen assist with production. Dark and wonderfully complex, her pieces have a lucky-talisman feel, as though they were handcrafted out of found elements for specific purposes. They're the kind of accessories that get noticed without screaming at the top of their lungs. “I like bold, but not in a crazy way,” she says. “I’m not a conceptual thinker...I like to think with my hands.”
She draws her inspiration from arts and crafts from the sixties and seventies, couture high craft, ancient and ethnic jewelry, and fashions from the New Age disco era. "I’m also very interested in textiles and traditional handicrafts from all around the globe. I like to play around with hard vs. soft, masculine vs. feminine, ancient vs. contemporary and human vs. alien."
picture credit: mondette.com
Annie Costello Brown ... in category: Fashion