Hidden Treasures
Regardless of talent or aesthetic vision, many accessories designers labor in relative obscurity, crafting pricey baubles for dowagers or charms for spoiled teens.
But when Yves Saint Laurent’s Stefano Pilati takes notice of your work, you know you’re not exactly destined for anonymity.
Annie Costello Brown’s jewelry designs have had a cult following in the L.A. fashion scene for years. Dark and wonderfully complex, her leather-heavy necklaces, belts and bracelets have a lucky-talisman feel, as though they were handcrafted for individuals out of found elements for specific reasons.
They're the kind of cool-girl accessories that get noticed without screaming at the top of their lungs. And the collection's prices, which hover in the $200 range for most pieces, feel more than reasonable, considering the obvious craftsmanship involved in the creation of each piece.
But despite the press-shy designer's unfailing aesthetics -- and small-but-rabid fan base -- she's only recently found commercial success.
CULT FAVE: Accessories designer Annie Costello Brown.
And it arrived in two very different forms -- one mass, one niche.
Earlier this year, Urban Outfitters tapped her to design an exclusive three-piece collection, dubbed Clea, which she based on Cleopatra and a personal childhood friend. “There was that brief moment when I thought, ‘Oh my god, am I a sellout?’” Costello Brown says about being approached by the Philadelphia-based mass retailer. “But you’ve got to strike while the iron is hot, got to make hay while the sun shines and all of that, you know? This is really a fleeting business and I am just so lucky, I have no idea how I got this lucky.”
An understatement, perhaps, considering who came knocking next. Pilati, YSL’s creative director, discovered Costello Brown’s work last year at a Gregory Parkinson fashion presentation in Culver City (Pilati was in town to shoot the label’s spring campaign).
The joint design process has been the definition of fluid, Costello Brown says. “Stefano is so easy to talk to and so articulate about what he wants, it made for such an easy collaboration. It’s easy just working with someone who has a higher aesthetic understanding of the world, and it was a huge confidence boost for me.” Not to mention an incredible calling card for her career.
Raised on a houseboat in Sausalito, Calif. by her artist parents, Costello Brown’s upbringing was nontraditional. Her father is a musician, while her mother, trained in metalsmithing, crafted jewelry when Costello was young. ““I’m definitely not a trust fund kid," she said. "My parents had a lot more idealism than I did. I always thought Oh my god, I have hippie parents, what a weird life. You always want to be different than what you are.”
A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Costello Brown entered college later than most – in her 20s – after moving out at age 17 and landing a job with Bess Nathan, a jewelry designer in the Bay Area. In 2001, she settled in Los Angeles, where she began working for leather and accessories line Billykirk, where she honed her leatherworking acumen. She met her husband a few months after moving to the City of Angels, and the two were married in 2006 and have a six-month-old son, Dion.
“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.
PRETTY TOUGH: Mixed leather, pearl and chain necklace, $275, and three-tiered circle necklace, $235.
“I was more artsy, weird, avant-garde in the beginning, just playing around before making things that were more wearable,” she says. “I don’t want my customer to be a person just wearing something — I want them to be someone with rad style.”
Costello Brown designs and makes the collection out of her Echo Park home, where four to five craftswomen assist with production. She’s only had presence in an L.A. showroom for a year. “Even with all the big name deals, I’m not doing more than a million in sales or anything like that,” she says. “I never experienced the boom time so have built my business in the down time when other people had to cut. Accessories are known to sell well in economic hard times, people try to update wardrobe that way. It’s not a guarantee but there is some safety in that.”
Annie Costello Brown's designs are avialable at the Des Kohan boutique, 671 S. Cloverdale Ave., Los Angeles, 323-857-0200.