Pamela Love Interview for LURVE Magazine

You are making everything with your hands from styling to doing jewelry, how do you feel about being involve into the fashion world on so many levels?

I love working with my hands and am an extremely visual person.  Fashion to me is like art.  I think about the shoots I style and the jewelry I make the same way I think about and execute a painting or a sculpture.

Your work seems to evolve around universal things: love, death, animals, nature. Did those subjects came naturally or was it more like a plan of doing something disturbing yet beautiful?

I have always loved animals and nature very much and feel that they have a magical power.  I am interested in creating jewelry that i feel a spiritual connection to.  Animals, nature, love, religion, music, life, death.  all these things are a part of this.  My connection to death has been much stronger in the recent years. My father past away almost three years ago, which is when I started making my jewelry.  I think there are a lot of elements of death and life after death in my jewelry and it is probably related to the death of my father.  Making jewelry has been therapeutic for me in those times.

You seems to be a very humble person even when you are getting so many positive reviews about your work. Did you ever expect to have that kind of recognition, how does that make you feel?

I didn’t expect the jewelry to be as well received as it is.  It makes me very happy but also very nervous because I hope that as I grow and change as a designer my new work will be appreciated as much or more than what I have done so far.

Do you think that one of the reason of this popularity is because people are attracted by the things they can´t have?

I hope not. I want people who like my jewelry to be able to have it.  I am working this season on making pieces out of more affordable materials so that they will sell for less.  I am also selling to many more stores this season so it will be easier to find my pieces.

I don’t think the popularity is because people are attracted to things they cannot have.  I think the popularity has more to do with the classic and universal quality of the pieces, while still being unique, edgy,and interesting.

I feel like your work is more about taking risks than actually conformimg, clearly too complicated for Forever 21 to copy.

I hope they do not copy me.  However i wouldn’t be against collaborating with a large retailer one day.  I like the idea of being able to have my work reach people all over the place.

Having Love as a last name immediately implies some sort of romantism, is that why you choose to go more on a dark side?

No.  I just have a bit of  dark aesthetic.  My last name has been Love my whole life so sometimes i forget the word even has such a romantic implication.  I sometimes think it sounds a little like a strippers name more than anything.

Do you think of yourself as an artist? i mean especially with the art scene being so present in New York?

I think of myself as a designer.  I studied art in college and had dreams of becoming a painter or an installation artist and one day I still plan to build huge installations. I still paint at home and work with some other artists, but as far as the jewelry is concerned I think of myself as a designer. Creating the pieces feels like creating artwork and i execute them the way I would execute a painting. However the idea of creating something for someone to wear and that will be sold in a store separates it from art. It becomes design.  I don’t know which is better or more powerful for me. They both are very important.

And what´s next?

New jewelry collections and collaborations.  And i am going on tour with my band!

Interviewed by Yasmine Bryce for LURVE Magazine