Chromantics, the New Book About Solange Azagury-Partridge

I met Solange Azagury-Partridge in her first London salon in the Notting Hill area. It was the early 2000s and I was looking for the famous Hotlips hand-enameled lip rings in hyper pop colors. Inspired by the four basic colors of lipstick, Classic Red, Nude, Bubblegum Pink and Black Cherry, Hotlips have now become icons in contemporary designer jewelry, included in the permanent jewelry collection on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. A veritable brand, Hotlips by Solange, comes complete with its own boutique. «Before the digital revolution, we used to write letters,» says the designer. «Making a phone call abroad was very expensive, so, if we wanted to keep in touch with friends near or far, we wrote letters to each other. I have written loads over the years and the emotion I have always felt on sending them or while waiting for replies, is the beauty of “delayed gratification” of which I am a real expert. Because, like a letter, creating a piece of jewelry or a collection requires small steps that cannot be taken too quickly. It is a journey of trial and error, along which you try to develop and modify your “creature” until it is perfect, ready to be sent or worn. And since I always signed my letters by printing a big kiss on the paper with lipstick in the color I was wearing at the time, Hotlips are an ode to those days when I used to write letters. When you couldn't physically be with someone, a kiss with lipstick imprinted on the paper seemed to me the most tangible way to show affection, love... more than any xx’s next to my signature. And in this intimate journey of mine, Hotlips wants to make the feeling of that kiss physical, so much so that it becomes wearable,» the designer explains. An indelible contribution to contemporary jewelry, in which irony, fantasy, provocation, vision and coherence constitute the essence of her appeal and thirty-five-year career, now celebrated by this book published by Rizzoli. «She has been the inspiration of many and in a constantly variable manner: the neon lights and concentric rainbows of 1960s Pop Art, the biblical temptation of the serpent and the tree of knowledge, the geometric patterns on the surface of faceted gems, and even classic childhood candies,» explains Clare Phillips, curator of the Department of Decorative Art and Sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum, in the book's preface. «She has always followed her dreams and passions in an eclecticism driven by careful observation and a sense of the beauty of the world around her, filtered through her whims and wit. She designs for self-pleasure and is not willing to compromise or revise an idea to gain general favor. Neutral and inconspicuous colors have never appealed to her because, in her words, “I don't think jewelry should be polite,”» Phillips concludes. The book’s author Ruth Peltason adds: «This book can and should be judged by its cover, in its extremely “au courant” neon green “dress”, with so many thematic chapters meant to be a real feast for the eyes.» In a succession of extravagant and iconic jewels in which emeralds, rubies, diamonds and enamels coexist like an endless party, Solange Azagury-Partridge's style journey is now etched in the jewelry hall of fame.