zblog

Brooklyn designer, Kate Cusack, approaches jewelry design as a visual artist, rather than as a fashion designer. And quite appropriately for zblog…she approaches it with a Z! …Kate use[s the] humble, metal-teethed zipper…to create [her Zipper Jewelry which includes Zipper Pins, Zipper Necklaces and Zipper Bracelets:

Full of unconventional thinking and playing with guises, her Zipper Jewlery fits wonderfully with the history of Z!

In Kate's words:

“In art school,” Kate explained, “I realized that once you allow yourself to use materials in unconventional ways, then, just about anything is possible. It’s ironic that most fashion designers try to hide or disguise zippers in their creations. However, I love zippers’ shiny metal teeth and I want to show off, not hide, their sparkle and their sinuous flexibility.”

Kate’s ingenious creations makes us realize that there is no limit to what one can do with a humble zipper.

Kate also sent a link to this recent article from Cool Hunting on her work which reveals a little more of her fazcinating history with zippers and z:

Her first Zipper Pin came about in 2002. Having recently finished designing and creating costumes for a children's dance theater company, she got her hands on bags and bags of zippers. Picking up on the current trends in fashion, the iconic Chanel Camellia and the sartorial thrift from the 1940s (designers used extra fabric from dressmaking as decorative elements), she started experimenting.

The resulting accessories reference the elegance of depression-era resourcefulness while simultaneously deconstructing fashion and costuming—not to mention their readymade aesthetic appeal. The curving, layered forms that Kate comes up with celebrate the sparkle of the metal teeth and the endless possibilities that the linear construction affords. A zipper is, after all, little more than a line [OF COURSE IT IS! ITS A Z!!!], perhaps the simplest of design building blocks.

Her costume design career and zipper jewelry have grown on parallel, sometimes intersecting, tracks over the past few years. After spending four years studying at the Maryland Institute College of Art, creating costumes made of unlikely materials and collaborating with the community on parades and festivals, she moved back to New York. There, she found work designing costumes for a number of small off-off-Broadway shows, as well as at top NYC costume shop Parsons-Meares where she made costumes for Broadway and Disney.

[It was while]…Squeezing in stints as a window dresser…for Tiffany & Co.’s 5th Avenue store…that her zipper jewelry first got noticed. The woman in the visual merchandising department who hired Kate admired the zipper pin she’d affixed to her jacket so Kate made the second zipper pin as a thank you.

for updates on her wonderful work Kate has a blog and has just added Zipper Pins to her esty store…I think z will definitely be indulging!
z-source: Trend.Land post
thankz Kate!