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All That Glitters
Sitting at rows of well-lit desks in a large, crowded space, a dozen people assemble high-end costume jewelry. Virtually every visible surface is covered with trays, cabinets, baskets, boxes and bags full of a glittering galaxy of bejeweled metal trinkets. Along one bank of tables, women carefully select tiny glass chips and Swarovsky crystals from a shimmering pile using the fine point of a waxy stylus. They paint the chips with glue, then precisely place them into the proper housings of their metal framework. At the work tables along another side of the room, women deftly thread jewelry pieces into bracelets, necklaces and other jeweled ornaments. A simple piece can be assembled in a matter of seconds. An ornate necklace can take as much as 20 minutes. In a room just off the main space, still other workers sew handbags onto filigreed metal clasps encrusted with glittering crocodiles.
Manufacturing locally, Goldfarb says, has a lot of advantages. For example, Seasonal Whispers can turn around a product much faster than a seller who has to wait for the item to cross the Pacific. “We got a call from [the television show] ‘Gossip Girls’ yesterday, saying they have seen our work and they want to dress [the character] Taylor in something of ours for an upcoming episode,” Goldfarb said. “By three o’clock, we had put together a whole new collection ready for her. If we were importing our stuff, we could never do that.”
Keeping up with the pace of change in the fashion world demands a constant flow of new designs. Goldfarb estimates that her workshop creates about 300 new pieces a year. Each one begins its life in the back of the workshop at the casting house, manned by veteran metal caster Angel Rodriguez.
After they come up with an idea for a new piece, it is painstakingly sculpted in wax, then sandwiched between two circular rubber plates. The plates are then vulcanized to harden them while the wax melts and drains away. Once the mold is ready, its two halves are clamped shut and Rodriguez ladles molten metal—a mixture of tin, antimony, copper and silver—from a covered cauldron kept perpetually boiling into a hole in the center of the mold. The mold is set spinning to force the metal to the outer rim.
Li, the workshop manager, was a history teacher in China. “It’s funny—back in China I never expected to be making jewelry,” she said. “But I really like it. We’re all friends, and it’s nice to sit and make something beautiful.”
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