Proenza Schouler 2012 in collaboration with Alex and Lee for Pre Spring accessories - a 1960’s San Francisco-inspired necklace collection.

Alex and Lee's Awesome Website

Hippie Hot: Alex and Lee

My increasing pre-occupation with craft has really been honed in over the recent months, owing to my extensive travels around India. Something about artisanal design is timeless and in this country, we have perfected the art of making the home spun/ethnic/handicrafts aesthetic the coolest thing coming out of fashion weeks. More on that later. For now, I look across the pond to Proenza Schouler, my current favorite fashion designers for an inspired, well crafted and strange necklace collection.. Its incredible and I've never seen anything like it!
Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez in collaboration with Alex & Lee developed one of a kind pieces of Art-to-Wear jewelry that incorporates intricate knotting of macramé, natural and industrial elements with found objects. From hand-carved wood to copper, pyrite, resin and more, the collection evokes a modern perspective but with a mystical and textured feel of the early 1970s. 
You know me, I was floored by the artisanal touches and my love of assemblage in design making these necklaces high on my collectors list even at a cool heartbeat-skipping 4000$.  
Alex and Lee say they have mountains of cord, trim, minerals, crystals, metal, and found objects, and somehow the elements find their perfect marriage, a surprisingly seamless union of the unexpected. They refer to their creations as offerings for the temple of the body and objects of the ancient future. What otherwise would sound like hippie fluff, sounds just perfect here, I must say.
A bit on Proenza Schouler's pre Spring 2012 clothing, lest we forget how they killed it with touches of digitized ikats and plaids, a stirring color palette of muddy browns and burnt oranges, and crisply tailored '70s silhouettes.

Proenza Schouler Pre Spring 2012

Circuitry Scarab and Tropical Moth Necklace

Iguana Pup and Crystal Candy Necklace