A special view beside it.
A new collection, PARALLEL, has joined AVM.
AVM is made by Hiromichi Furukawa in Nemuro, Hokkaido. It's already familiar to cliché, but every time we see something new, we're reminded that he was thinking of something like this all along. This PARALLEL was no exception.
Gold and silver. Two metals with different colors and different light, sitting side by side to form a single piece of jewelry. They aren't mixed together, and neither is made to resemble the other. Different things, side by side, each staying different.
When I saw the construction, I honestly thought it looked great. At the same time, I found myself overthinking things again.
“I wonder what this would look like in white on white.”
Good evening. This is Matsushima from cantáte.
To mark the new PARALLEL pieces, we commissioned four special pieces for cliché.
PARALLEL RING and PARALLEL NECKLACE are made with K10 WHITE GOLD and SV950.
¥220,000 TAX IN
Up to size 9 ￥220,000- TAX IN
Sizes 10–14 ￥231,000- TAX IN
Sizes 15–19 ￥242,000- TAX IN
Sizes 20–24 ￥253,000- TAX IN
Sizes 25–30 ￥264,000- TAX IN
"PARALLEL NECKLACE〈K10× SV950〉"
¥814,000 TAX IN
HUNTER and ANGEL are INSIDE OUT pieces based on K10 WHITE GOLD, with the reverse finished in K18 GOLD.
¥686,400 TAX IN
Up to size 9 ￥686,400- TAX IN
Sizes 10–14 ￥720,720- TAX IN
Sizes 15–19 ￥755,040- TAX IN
Sizes 20–24 ￥789,360- TAX IN
Sizes 25–30 ￥823,680- TAX IN
¥327,800 TAX IN
Up to size 9 ￥327,800- TAX IN
Sizes 10–14 ￥344,190- TAX IN
Sizes 15–19 ￥360,580- TAX IN
Sizes 20–24 ￥376,970- TAX IN
Sizes 25–30 ￥393,360- TAX IN
First, a little about K10 WHITE GOLD.
This time, I didn't specify, “Please make it in K10.” I asked Furukawa-san.
“What's your favorite karat of WHITE GOLD, Furukawa-san?”
The answer was K10.
In that case, I'd like you to make it with that.
That's all there is to the story, but it made things a little difficult for Furukawa-san from there.
The lower the gold purity, the more its properties, such as hardness, vary depending on the types and proportions of alloying metals. K10 WHITE GOLD is a considerably harder material than K18, for example. In other words, it's not an easy material to work with.
Especially with this PARALLEL NECKLACE. A ring might be manageable, but making that delicate chain piece by piece in K10 WHITE GOLD...
It must have been grueling.
The moment we settled on “K10,” I caught Furukawa-san making a brief “Oh no” face.
Sorry.
But seeing the finished piece, I knew K10 was the right choice after all.
By crisp, I don't just mean hard as a metal. Even the light has a certain tension to it. Compared with the slightly softer white of SV950, K10 WHITE GOLD looks cooler, with more defined edges. And yet it doesn't have an unpleasant glare.
A crisp, refined look.
This feel worked especially well for this PARALLEL.
The regular PARALLEL pairs silver with gold. Because the colors differ, you can immediately see the two metals side by side. I asked for the opposite.
K10 WHITE GOLD and SV950. White on white.
From a distance, they might look like a single shade of white. But up close, the light is different. The color temperature is different, too. As each metal is worn, it will gather its own history.
They look the same, but they aren't.
I thought that, with a name like PARALLEL, this kind of pairing could be interesting, too.
The two lines sit side by side without intersecting. WHITE GOLD doesn't need to pretend to be silver, and silver doesn't need to look like WHITE GOLD. Each stays true to its own light, right beside the other.
With the PARALLEL RING, that difference is condensed into the smallest area. At first glance, it’s understated. It doesn’t have that familiar look of combination jewelry that makes a design statement out of using two different materials.
But when you look closely, the difference is there.
That’s the length I like.
And then there’s the PARALLEL NECKLACE.
This one is also made of K10 WHITE GOLD and SV950, but I made one more request. The original is 74 cm. For cliché, it’s 49 cm. We shortened it by 25 cm.
This isn’t about the material; I’m thinking entirely in terms of clothes.
Of course, 74 cm has its own appeal. It falls all the way to the chest, making the jewelry itself one element of the styling. But I wanted something that sat a little closer to the neck.
With a T-shirt, it sits close to the neckline. With a shirt, it peeks out a little from the open first button. Even with a jacket, it doesn’t disappear into the V.
You don’t choose your clothes to show off the necklace; the necklace is simply there with the clothes you’d wear anyway.
That’s why it’s 49 cm.
It’s not just a few centimeters; we’ve changed it by 25 cm, so even though it’s the same necklace, the impression is quite different. And above all, we had this 49 cm version made in K10 WHITE GOLD.
I can’t apologize enough to Furukawa-san.
Every time I look at the chain, I think I’ll remember that fleeting expression.
The other two are HUNTER and ANGEL. For these, we took a slightly different approach.
K10 WHITE GOLD on the front, and K18 GOLD on the back.
INSIDE OUT.
If you’re going to use gold, you’d normally want to put it somewhere visible. This time, though, I wanted to do the opposite.
From the outside, it’s a quiet white; the gold only appears when you turn it over.
You may not see them for most of the time you wear them. I think that’s fine.
I’m drawn to the same things in clothes. The inside of a jacket, pocket lining, details you only see when a button is undone. I’ll happily do things that could go unnoticed for a lifetime unless I explain them to someone.
But I know it’s there.
I feel like that kind of luxury is easier to live with over time.
The gold on HUNTER and ANGEL is the same. It isn’t gold meant to be on display all the time; it’s the kind you see when you take it off, when it moves, or when it happens to turn over.
There’s a certain sensuality in not showing off.
Having requested these four pieces, there’s something I’ve come to realize all over again.
A special order isn’t about changing the original to suit your own taste. At least, that’s not what I want to do.
I liked how PARALLEL looked, so I wanted to see a different PARALLEL, too.
Furukawa-san says K10 WHITE GOLD is his favorite, so that made me want to see PARALLEL in that material.
It’s not that 74 cm is wrong and that’s why we made it 49 cm. I just wanted to see how I could wear 49 cm with my clothes.
Rather than adding something to the original design, you give the possibilities it already held a little more room to grow.
Isn’t that what a special order between a brand and a shop is supposed to be?
Furukawa-san makes AVM in Nemuro, while I run cliché and make clothes in Tokyo. We see different things and think about different things. But when we talk from time to time, something that wasn’t there before takes shape between us.
I think that, too, is PARALLEL.
Four new additions from cliché have joined AVM’s latest collection.
It may sound a little sweet, but that feels just right for this time.
We haven’t redesigned PARALLEL. Right beside the new perspective Furukawa-san discovered, we simply asked him to draw another line: “I’d like to see this one too.”
K10 WHITE GOLD and SV950. White on the front, K18 GOLD on the back. And from 74 cm to 49 cm.
Every one of them is subtle enough that you’d pass right by without knowing.
And yet, we go to so much trouble over differences that small.
I think that’s probably what making things is all about.
If you think only about efficiency, there are more things you don’t need to do. It doesn’t have to be K10 WHITE GOLD, and it doesn’t have to be 49 cm. You don’t have to go out of your way to choose the more difficult option; it works just fine as it is.
But how far are you willing to go along with “you don’t have to go that far”?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.
Another piece has arrived, one that took a great deal of effort to make.
More on that tomorrow.
Thank you, Furukawa-san.
And about the K10 chain, once again, I’m sorry.
cantáte Matsushima Shin
