Meggen Taylor You may be unfamiliar with her name, but if you follow pop culture you would definitely recognize New York City based designer Bliss Lau s work. Lau, who was raised in Hawaii, attended Parsons School of Design with fellow classmate Prabal Gurung under the wise tutelage of Tim
Gunn. She graduated with a BFA in Apparel Design in 2003 and launched her eponymous brand with her senior thesis project, the Accordion Bag, a handbag that ended up being sold at Fred Segal and Opening Ceremony.
In 2006 Lau veered away from accessories. After getting bored with handbag design I began playing around with the excess metal left over from making my bags. I draped the chain over the form like a garment and the first body chain was born. This was also the day that my passion for designing handbags transitioned into a passion for metal and making body jewelry, which I prefer to call sensual armor, shares Lau. Lau s modern take on what was once a taboo accessory catapulted the designer and her statement piece into pop-culture status when Beyonce wore one of the body chains in her Drunk in Love video. And Lau hasn t stopped making it work while quietly attracting an impressive celebrity client list since. Today Lau focuses on creating fine jewelry pieces and customized made to order designs that create a physical experience for her wearers. A constant design inspiration and theme woven throughout Lau s work is her curiosity with exploring the relative and the absolute and playing with these opposing concepts to create both fluid and kinetic forms with her designs.
Explains Lau, I am duality: I am of two worlds half Chinese American and half American (in Hawaii we call ourselves Hapa). Growing up in the islands and now my adulthood in New York City, I am very much of both places. I ve flexed, grown and changed perspectives along with taking a lot of risks in the last fourteen years running my company. At my core I want to design and make pieces that I love.
Lau s inspiration for her pieces also comes from this sense of being rooted in a place. I find inspiration from linear shapes, patterns, and structures, says Lau. That is partially why I have found so much inspiration in the Brooklyn Bridge. Each design I offer hosts two types of inspiration: the physical and the emotional. I always also want to start with what the feel of the piece will be and then I can move into the tangible elements, continues Lau. With Lau s first taste of success coming right off the heels of graduation I was fascinated with where she got the confidence to work for
herself straight out of college. Lau tells me, I come from a family of entrepreneurs so I feel like I was truly destined to start my own company. On my Chinese American side, my family had a small insurance company and a noodle factory. On my American side, my uncles have a paint company and an ornamental plant business. Seeing my family members succeed in their careers made me fearless in launching on my own. Lau also credits her family for helping instill the values, fortitude, and work ethic required to be a successful business owner. After I graduated from Parsons, I worked coat check at night, and then worked all day on my business. It was not glamorous, but I was committed to growing my business and reinvesting the profits. When I received large orders, I initially didn t have the funds to finance them, so I worked out a short-term loan structure with my uncle and every six months, I would pay him back. He would say to me, With every dollar you make, think fifty cents of it is mine. This was a great learning experience for me to understand how to work positively with my finances, states Lau.
Lau currently has two main collections in addition to offering custom made pieces. Her latest, The Suspension Collection, is an expanding collection of rings, earrings, necklaces and wrist cuffs that was inspired by iconic NY buildings such as the Brooklyn Bridge, which has been her view out of several apartments for the last few years. And although she still offers her sensual armor in 2016 Lau launched the Ceremony Collection, a bespoke engagement ring experience where Lau works with couples to design rings based off of their own love story that was inspired by her own engagement. In 2010, I met my husband and he proposed to me with a hand-bound sketchbook, expressing that he wanted me to design my own engagement ring; this is where I began developing my patent-pending slide ring concept. After that, friends and clients started asking me to make them versions of my ring and eventually a new business was born, shares Lau. After making custom and one-of-a-kind rings for a few years, Lau continues, I slowly developed a specific aesthetic around my designs. I decided to begin developing a proper alternative bridal collection to offer my clients. The Slide Ring I originally made for my own wedding ring at that point was functionally pristine and I felt ready to offer it for sale. I made a small collection of rings: the Centered ring, Minimalist, Minimalist Arc, the Acute, Elliptical and Oblique. We only use Sapphires in our collection, but are open to setting client s stones if they request it.
Working with couples to design wedding rings also taps into the duality that is inherent to couples. There are two styles, two people and two opinions that want to be intertwined. My task is to emulate them both within a single design. I love a challenge but more so, as a solution-based person, it s fun to weave through the options of how to appease both parties, be it with the meaning of a color or a shared love for an aesthetic, explains Lau. On what her favorite part of making custom wedding rings for couples Lau tells me, I love the process of designing pieces with my clients, learning about them, their story and how they met. Design to me is a question of permanence. I began making wedding rings because they are something that will be kept forever, passed down for generations and worn every day. I find so much joy in creating a piece that is a symbol of a persons past and future as well as a celebration of life. I couldn t imagine making anything else.