CONTINUED

   Ms West, 27, is a native New Yorker from Long Island who moved to Manhattan (to attend FIT) in 1994. While at FIT, she turned all her energy and creative expression into jewellery design. After graduating in 1998, she created her first collection: a range of leather cuffs inspired by hip-hop musicians. Since then, she has expanded her creative horizons and her line to include sleek leather earrings, oversized belts, abstract sterling silver and yellow gold rings, pendants, earrings and necklaces, with the emphasis on ‘capturing the true essence and spirit of the individual.
   ‘We all have such unique and divine attributes,’ says Ms West, ‘that gives us strength. My jewellery will simply enhance the feeling of being yourself and loving every minute of it.’
   Her spring 2004 collection, the Abyss Collection: Fine Jewelry for the Mind, Body and Imaginative Spirit, is at once both powerful and delicate. As seen with Ms Givens’s collection, each piece serves to play off a woman’s sense of herself. Her hammered copper bracelets and bangles (priced between $30 and $350) are wearable pieces of modern art. Her sterling silver raindrop earrings ($375) have the added attraction of being able to accentuate any outfit from a sexy Hervé Léger-esque bondage dress to a Cinderella gown fit for a princess. For the customer with a more limited budget, she also designed some very beautiful beaded earrings and necklaces ($80–$125). If you are looking to add a bit of toughness to your outfit, then her leather slit cuffs with tie—long and short—and wishbone leather earrings are just the right pieces. They come in red, yellow, green, white and black leather, but custom colours are available upon request from the individual client. These are priced between $65 and $120. These two young ladies are well on their way to even greater success in the market-place. You heard it here first.
   For more information, log on to their web site, www.ashakagivens.com.

Paul Hardy

CALGARY-BASED DESIGNER Paul Hardy came into New York City under a blaze of pre-show publicity. Although Jeanne Beker, the host of Fashion Television and the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Canada’s Fashion Quarterly magazine,* proclaimed him to be ‘the only Canadian designer to ever headline a collection at New York’s fashion week’, Mr Hardy is hardly the first Canadian designer to wash up on our shores during fashion week. One’s mind goes back to the design team of Cloak, who has been showing in New York City for several seasons now and so many small designers whose collections barely made a ripple. But I digress. Mr Hardy was fêted at the Canadian Embassy at a cocktail reception and prominently featured in pre-show write-ups in all the important fashion columns. Ultimately, the question becomes: did he deliver? Let’s just say that he aimed for the fences, succeeding more often than failing.

CONTINUED

While most everyone else was looking towards Alice in Wonder­land, Mr Hardy went into the apocalyptic future and gave us a cleaner version of Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunder­dome

ABOVE: Paul Hardy. BELOW: Y & Kei.

* No relation to the earlier title founded by Paula Ryan.—Ed