Love Illuminati
Spread the Love: Photo Submission
Graham B. spreads the Love while rock-climbing in his Boulder, Colorado, backyard—and even manages to keep his Love Illuminati vintage fedora on during his climb!
Where have you spread the Love? Click here for Details
Street Style #3
Most of the time, it’s less about the different elements of a look, and more about how they’re all put together. Take Michelle’s outfit. Normally, this many trendy pieces—high-waisted jeans, lightweight summer scarf, strappy sandals—meshed together would be overkill. But Michelle wears ’em with a breezy, just-threw-this-together cool, which we adore. Her sailor-front jeans (a fun departure from last year’s boyfriend jeans, which, yes, we’re still loving) pair perfectly with her patent sandals, and her leopard scarf pops against her deliciously eighties cropped tee, this summer’s must-get staple. But what really makes the look work is her refreshing lack of jewelry; mussed, bed-head hair; and makeup-free face. After all, you don't always have to try so hard. By: Emily Goulet
Spread the Love
We’ve heard wonderful stories about where our pieces have been worn, from senior prom to the beaches of Puerto Rico—and we want to see it! Send us a photo of you rocking something from our shop (anything from a dress to a bracelet) and dish all the details: your name, age, what you’re wearing from L.I., where you wore it, and any interesting tidbits (i.e. you received a bajillion compliments, your boyfriend proposed to you that night, you were approached by a gaggle of gorgeous ladies who fawned over your L.I. tee). We’ll post your pic on our blog, and each month we’ll pick our favorite. The winner will win a $20 gift card to Love Illuminati—just our little way of giving back the love.
So, spill: Where have you spread the Love? Email us the pics at love@loveilluminati.com
Inspiration Board
Street Style #2
Possibly the best part
about Kate’s effortless look is that she achieved it with a shirt she
discovered in her school’s lost-and-found. She layered her find (which she cropped herself) over a rosy brown
racerback tank, and finished it off with an oatmeal-hued cotton skirt. Her
cognac-colored sandals and leather wrap belt pull it all together, and her gold jewelry pops
against her otherwise neutral look. And check out her supersized stag ring,
complete with knuckle-grazing antlers. (Our gold two-finger parrot ring packs the same statement-making punch.) By: Emily Goulet
In The Mix
J+R Jewels Rocks Love Illuminati
We sat down with one-half of the J + R Jewels team, Rachel Noel, who—with her so-cute boyfriend, 20-year-old Jon Hansell—creates gorgeous, one-of-a-kind pieces from stuff like slices of crystal-filled rock (the correct word, we learned, is geode), vintage brooches and salvaged bullets. Words By: Emily Goulet
You’d never guess that the bubbly, blonde-haired, blue-eyed 19-year-old college sophomore—she’s studying fashion design and merchandising at Manhattan’s LIM College—is the co-owner and designer of a five-month-old burgeoning jewelry biz based out of Bucks County and New York. And you’d also never guess that guy’s-guy Hansell—all Adidas sandals, rumpled T-shirts and cargo shorts—has a pretty good (okay, incredible) eye for jewelry design. Read on for snippets of our convo with Rachel—and get the low-down on how she gets inspired, what she’d buy from her own line, and what it's really like starting a business with your boyfriend.
On getting into jewelry-making: School wasn’t creative enough for me. I wasn’t designing. My boyfriend and I went to a flea market and we began to buy stuff to make necklaces—just for fun. One night over dinner, we came up with this idea. It was really a collective idea. He has a background in metalworking—he’s a steamfitter, and they solder things.
On her fave piece from the collection: Our blue geode slice. It’s basically a raw rock that was sliced, and it’s crystallized in the center. It’s one-hundred-percent natural. We had to drill it and wire-wrap it to make it into a pendant, and it’s hung on a silver chain that we found in New York. It’s Katra’s favorite piece, too. She wore it for the first two weeks it was in the store.
On her inspiration: That’s such a hard one. My personal style changes constantly. I’m really into Native American and Western stuff right now. It’s kind of hippy, bohemian-ish. For the men’s stuff, it’s definitely surfer. We also made pieces especially for Love Illuminati—we use tiki men, tribal-looking stuff made from wood, old-world currency, and some carved bone pendants—for men or women.
On helping the earth: We’re trying to be eco-friendly. We use a lot of raw, all-natural materials like semi-precious stones, and reusable pieces like salvaged wood and metals, old-world currency, and vintage brooches and pendants.
On whether it’s difficult working side-by-side with her B.F. of three-and-a-half-years: It’s not hard—we haven’t had any fights. I have an eccentric style, and he respects it, but he might not always get it. When [our stuff] sold so quickly, he learned that my judgment is on point. He actually surprised me with his designs. He does the more difficult stuff, all the metalworking, and when he makes something, it’s entirely his design.
On the other part of the business: We also sell vintage pieces and authentic Native American pieces—that’s about five percent of our business. People love our kachina necklaces. We get them from this woman who’s part of a tribe in Oklahoma. There are laws surrounding kachina necklaces—they’re only authentic if they’re made by someone who’s an actual tribal member.
On the pieces of jewelry she always wears: Oh, God, I have a few. I always wear my boyfriend’s grandmother’s vintage mother-of-pearl animal fetish necklace.
On irony: I was never a jewelry girl. [Jon] bought me my first piece of jewelry, and he just kept going. Growing up with girls, he knows how to treat a lady, and he knows jewelry. I trust him completely to pick out jewelry, and his taste is good.
On what you’ll find on her iPod: The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. And ’80s music. The cheesy stuff.
On bigger and better things: I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t like the thought of working in a cubicle. The jewelry is a segueway into bigger things.
You’d never guess that the bubbly, blonde-haired, blue-eyed 19-year-old college sophomore—she’s studying fashion design and merchandising at Manhattan’s LIM College—is the co-owner and designer of a five-month-old burgeoning jewelry biz based out of Bucks County and New York. And you’d also never guess that guy’s-guy Hansell—all Adidas sandals, rumpled T-shirts and cargo shorts—has a pretty good (okay, incredible) eye for jewelry design. Read on for snippets of our convo with Rachel—and get the low-down on how she gets inspired, what she’d buy from her own line, and what it's really like starting a business with your boyfriend.
On getting into jewelry-making: School wasn’t creative enough for me. I wasn’t designing. My boyfriend and I went to a flea market and we began to buy stuff to make necklaces—just for fun. One night over dinner, we came up with this idea. It was really a collective idea. He has a background in metalworking—he’s a steamfitter, and they solder things.
On her fave piece from the collection: Our blue geode slice. It’s basically a raw rock that was sliced, and it’s crystallized in the center. It’s one-hundred-percent natural. We had to drill it and wire-wrap it to make it into a pendant, and it’s hung on a silver chain that we found in New York. It’s Katra’s favorite piece, too. She wore it for the first two weeks it was in the store.
On her inspiration: That’s such a hard one. My personal style changes constantly. I’m really into Native American and Western stuff right now. It’s kind of hippy, bohemian-ish. For the men’s stuff, it’s definitely surfer. We also made pieces especially for Love Illuminati—we use tiki men, tribal-looking stuff made from wood, old-world currency, and some carved bone pendants—for men or women.
On helping the earth: We’re trying to be eco-friendly. We use a lot of raw, all-natural materials like semi-precious stones, and reusable pieces like salvaged wood and metals, old-world currency, and vintage brooches and pendants.
On whether it’s difficult working side-by-side with her B.F. of three-and-a-half-years: It’s not hard—we haven’t had any fights. I have an eccentric style, and he respects it, but he might not always get it. When [our stuff] sold so quickly, he learned that my judgment is on point. He actually surprised me with his designs. He does the more difficult stuff, all the metalworking, and when he makes something, it’s entirely his design.
On the other part of the business: We also sell vintage pieces and authentic Native American pieces—that’s about five percent of our business. People love our kachina necklaces. We get them from this woman who’s part of a tribe in Oklahoma. There are laws surrounding kachina necklaces—they’re only authentic if they’re made by someone who’s an actual tribal member.
On the pieces of jewelry she always wears: Oh, God, I have a few. I always wear my boyfriend’s grandmother’s vintage mother-of-pearl animal fetish necklace.
On irony: I was never a jewelry girl. [Jon] bought me my first piece of jewelry, and he just kept going. Growing up with girls, he knows how to treat a lady, and he knows jewelry. I trust him completely to pick out jewelry, and his taste is good.
On what you’ll find on her iPod: The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. And ’80s music. The cheesy stuff.
On bigger and better things: I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t like the thought of working in a cubicle. The jewelry is a segueway into bigger things.
Street Style #1
