NOMIS Jewelry is a Ukraine-based fine jewelry brand founded in 2020 by Alyona Kiperman. All jewelry pieces are crafted individually with the vision of today’s fast-evolving world in mind. The jewelry made by Alyona is multifunctional, elegant, and soulful. We asked her about the first steps, her sources of inspiration, and difficulties faced along the way.
You founded NOMIS Jewelry in 2020. What did you do before and how did you come to start the brand?
Before I created my brand, in my youth, I was a professional athlete (climbing), I worked in a gallery for a long time, I was a DJ, and I was even working as a waiter for 3 days. My main inspiration and pleasure was travel, so I traveled a lot around the world, met people, and discovered new cultures. And I also gave life to my children. The brand was born when one day I became old enough to be interested in jewelry and I was looking for a gift for myself. And I realized that there is nothing that I like, so the right decision was to create Nomis jewelry.
Your jewelry pieces are unisex and multifunctional and have a strong contemporary identity. How do you manage to combine these aspects?
For me, it would be hard not to combine these aspects. I think that modern jewelry can easily be unisex, like perfume, watches, sunglasses, and everything that does not involve the range of different body sizes. Talking about the contemporary side of NOMIS Jewelry, I think the world has enough beautiful and flawless examples of classical jewelry but I can not really find something up-to-date. So I did pieces for myself and I am happy that people share my taste and my interest in the development of the industry.
On your website, we can see artworks from Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe, Yves Klein, and Mark Rothko, among others. Did these serve as an inspiration to you? Why do you find it important to show them on your website? What are some other things that inspire you?
Yes, they definitely inspire me, but not art itself but the feeling of harmony and chaos that art causes, that is the main inspiration for me. It’s the same situation with classical music and architecture. Also, my lifetime inspiration is industrial seaports.
In the NOMIS collection, you use lab-grown gems. What made you choose this material, and what advantages does it have?
We decided to start the brand with lab-grown stones because of the price and external characteristics. For example, it is very difficult to find an emerald of the right color at an affordable price. We sell designs, so the fact that we can play with amazing stones gives us wings to create new products, to experiment with materials. We are currently looking for mined stones for a new collection.
Your latest Instagram post says: Made in Ukraine under the Air Raid Sirens. NOMIS takes part in social projects like UNDER SIRENS to raise awareness about Ukraine and STRONG & PRECIOUS to donate money to organizations, which help Ukrainians who were injured in the war. How did the war affect your work and your everyday life?
The war took away the opportunity to enjoy life 100%. Every second, every Ukrainian, even the ones who do not live in Ukraine, feel that a brutal war is going on in their homeland. This is the emotional side of the issue. The practical side is that the logistics chains are interrupted, the export of jewelry is complicated. If it used to be difficult, now it is almost impossible. If the business is lucky and the production is not in the occupied territory and not in the gray zone, then there are fewer unknowns, e.g. power outages, the number of people in production, raw materials (again, if we are lucky and the warehouse with raw materials does not explode). The war of Russians against Ukraine is a tragedy, but we will definitely win and we will be left with a super ability to get out of situations from which there is no way out.
How do You see the future of NOMIS?
Our future is bright, it burns my eyes.
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