Jelly Sweet Jewels

We all remember rummaging through a bag of Haribos, wedging the gummy rings on our fingers and nibbling around them until our hands were covered in sticky patches. While impossible as an everyday accessory for us adults now, the nostalgia and sweet memory has stuck. So when a new, very grownup version of our childhood fantasies came on our radar, we felt like that kind a candy shop again.

Enter Kia Schwaninger, a jewellery designer who cut her teeth at Tiffany & Co. and meticulously honed her craft for a further 10 years designing at Van Cleef & Arpels. Her BTS work creating some of the most iconic jewellery we see out and about on the street means it’s a big deal for her to finally launch her own brand. Launched earlier this September, Kia’s namesake brand Kia Schwan combines candy-fied fun of making bespoke colour combos, along with architectural and crafted precision. Inspired by the old-school but instantly recognisable shapes of Art Deco structures, Kia’s pieces take on beautifully graphic forms, with rings and earrings curving in half moons and a rainbow spectrum of precious stones finding their shape stacked together.

The launch collection, titled Colorhythms, also allows for a bespoke service where Kia can share the range of coloured stones her client can choose to stack together - monochrome, or full-tilt rainbow. 18k gold mountings and dainty diamond settings add a decorative element but what we really love are the joyful combinations of colours and hard stones with soft colours that wrap up into one amazing and totally idiosyncratic first collection from a woman who has had to design under other brand DNA for so long.

Explore the full collection at Kia’s wonderfully posy-pink candy shop, um website, and don’t spend all your pocket money at once!