Tell Anna Wintour: An interview with Qari Qris, founder of the jewelry brand, on what’s important with the help of jewelry

Recently, local brands are rapidly gaining momentum, weight and importance. Almost every week, new players with great ambitions and bright talents appear on the fashion scene. We always follow such projects closely, bring you the most promising ones and boldly convey the names that are definitely worth knowing to Anna Wintour.

The new heroine of our column is Anastasia Davydova, the founder of the jewelry brand Qari Qris. And in this case, we can say with absolute confidence that the majority of the most stylish girls in the capital dream of her jewelry. Why only half? Because others already have it. We think that you have surely seen on social networks or on the streets of the city recognizable pendants with the Dymkovo horse, when you see which you feel a sharp sense of nostalgia for childhood, or earrings with bells, which immediately make you feel somehow warm and cozy inside. By the way, everyone’s associations are different, and not every jewelry brand can boast of this. Sometimes a ring is just a ring, and a bracelet is just a bracelet. But in Qari Qris such a trick will not work; every detail is important in the collection.

Today we invite you to get to know Anastasia better, learn a little more about what inspires her, when she made her first piece of jewelry and why classic hearts and trendy bows will never be out of place in the brand’s collection.

Karl Kris

While traveling in Georgia, I heard a poem by Galaktion Tabidze, which included the words ქარი ჰქრის – “the wind is blowing”. At that time, I was not a jeweler, but when I made my first rings with my own hands, I immediately understood what the name of my brand would be. For me, Qari Qris is the wind of change. It turned my life 180 degrees and I found myself in the place I always dreamed of. As a child, I wanted to do art, but my parents said that an artist is not a profession like a scientist, a doctor, a teacher or an engineer. So I didn’t go to an art institute, but studied to be a biologist, planned to go into science and even worked as a teacher. But thanks to Qari Qris, everything changed; now I can work as an artist.

Next March 2005, the brand will be 10 years old. It all started when I didn’t like the wedding rings that my future (now ex) husband and I ordered. I cried on the street with a box of these rings in my hands. At that time, we were quite marginal and wanted a wedding without a veil, a dress, and guests, but I wanted beautiful rings. Seeing my tears, Misha suggested that I make the wedding rings myself. At that time, I was working in a restoration workshop and he said to me: “If you can draw tiny hands on porcelain figurines, can’t you handle rings too?” We took the furniture from the house, turned the kitchen into a workshop and actually created our wedding rings.

Qari Qris style is at the intersection of poetic minimalism, modernism and gentle casual style. I like to combine sophistication and playfulness, experimenting with forms such as shells, flowers, ornaments or flowing lines. Our jewelry is not bright accents, but light touches to the image, soft halftones. They look different on each girl. Some people combine the “Dymkovo Horse” earrings with a trouser suit, reducing the degree of severity, while others, on the contrary, wear a pearl choker necklace with a white T-shirt and jeans.

I made my first ring in an ordinary jewelry workshop. It took two days: first I was taught how to melt the metal, open it, bend it and solder it into a ring. On the second day I was offered to solder something simple to the ring. But I complicated the task – I found a flower ring with a smoky transparent rauchtopaz (a precious stone). – Premium. to organise.). Six rations had to be made, and it was difficult: if you overheat one flower petal, the others will fall off. But I did it! The jeweler who conducted the master class said: “Wow! For the first time in my master class, someone created such a complex ring. You have talent! Later I realized that even without a diploma from the Institute of Arts, I can create beautiful things. I believed that thanks to this ring, everything will be fine for me.

For aesthetic enthusiasts for whom it is important that the objects around them reflect their inner world. There may be very few of these objects, but each has its own meaning and artistic value.

Since childhood. I have always loved unusual things. For example, I have a passion for Soviet design, because as a child I was surrounded by objects in the spirit of the movie “Walking in Moscow”. As a teenager I wore a Soviet jacket that my father had sewn himself, and I thought I was very cool. At that time, in the 90s, in my hometown, which was a rather provincial city, no one understood this.

I have never tried to follow trends. For example, I will not wear a banal necklace with a heart, although I have made one myself, but I will not make another, unusual, wavy heart, something that I have not seen on anyone else. As a designer, I do not do anything mediocre or outdated just because of my artistic taste. This is an unobvious path in fashion.

I created my first ring and realized that this was all I wanted to do. At first I worked 12-16 hours at the loom: I studied from video tutorials on YouTube, I tried, I tried. When fantasy takes material form, when it becomes tangible and complete, the creative process itself becomes my source of inspiration.

The Loewe brand always surprises me. Sometimes we do something similar in parallel. For example, in the spring at Qari Qris, we made a cartoon with the artist Nina Zakharova based on the collection “Forever”: a little girl spins in front of a mirror, and around her lies the whole world of her mother – lipsticks, creams, jewelry. It turned out that Loewe also makes cartoons with wool keychains. I like how they dare to make something old-fashioned modern. Looking at their photos, videos, collections, I am convinced that there are no rules in fashion – you can do whatever you want. Jacquemus’ videos always delight me; I love their subtle humor, light absurdity, and joy.

I am also inspired by the artists Paul Klee and Mikalojus Ciurlionis. The paintings of the latter are reminiscent of Qari Qris ornaments with their inner glow, their implicit meanings, the softness and tenderness of the shadows, their smoothness and subjects.

My inner freedom. I can create whatever I want in Qari Qris and there will always be someone who appreciates my jewellery, its lightness and depth.

In various collections. They are not similar to each other because each collection reflects my experiences and emotions at the moment when I invent and create it. And the periods are always different. The first collection is called “Movement” and its main decoration is a spiral in which a pearl moves, balancing it. The second collection, Shadows, is a reflection of the fact that just as a person is not always what they seem, objects are often not like their shadows. The Tbilisi collection is about lightness, falling in love, the breeze, the bend of the river, fear and tenderness. The Creation collection reflects the origin of life on Earth, it is about water, the traces of shells and mollusks, the beginning of beginnings, the living form. The Kintsugi collection is dedicated to the beauty of imperfections, cracks and scars, and the philosophy of wabi-sabi. In the “Fairy Tale” collection I express my love for home, for childhood with its naivety and magic, for the history of family and space that we unconsciously absorb from infancy. The latest collection, “Forever,” is about the bond between mother and child, the small hand inside a big hand, the anxious heart of a parent.

Falling in love, disappointment, rebirth, motherhood; this is my lifeline but also the story of every girl growing up. Decorations are the symbols with which I tell our lives. This is what unites all the collections and distinguishes Qari Qris from other brands.

We have a best seller – a necklace with a Dymkovo horse that everyone loves. But what I am most proud of is not that, but the triple movement earrings with pearls from the Tbilisi collection. In them I was able to express movement, dynamics and flights of fancy. I also like the wavy earrings from the same collection because of their fluid shape. They reflect my sense of harmony and sexuality.

I will definitely not have any jewelry related to weapons. Also, there will be nothing in the image of a diamond because it is fake: if diamonds are real, there is no imitation or fake.

I am creating a jewelry brand that is more than just jewelry, it is made up of symbols that have their own meaning. I am proud to own Qari Qris and grow the business.

We collaborated with Masha Egorova and I did not calculate the dimensions of the vase necklace. The result was a vase 10 centimeters in size and weighing the same as a gold bar. It is clear that it is impossible to wear it – it will weigh you down like a stone. Fortunately, we fixed everything and now it is a short and comfortable necklace.

Freedom of creativity. It’s hard when you’re heavily dependent on money and can’t afford that freedom. At first I copied collections manually and couldn’t create new ones. When the business started to develop, I had to learn a lot; I didn’t even invent jewelry, but I was involved in operational issues. Only when I debugged all the business processes did I have the space to create new collections.

Next year I dream of opening a beautiful store on the first line. We already have a showroom on Petrovka, but I want to develop it. I also aim to enter the international market. I just want to create collections, embody creative ideas and collaborate with artists. In the meantime, I am learning to delegate tasks so that Qari Qris can function as a well-coordinated mechanism, even without my participation.

The courage to be yourself. You can tie a silk scarf to your bag, put on bright socks and sandals, leave the house in your pajamas and feel the happiness of pleasing everyone, and catch the surprised looks of passersby.

I would make my dream come true; I would open a store in Europe and produce. I would like to thank the team and everyone who contributed to Qari Qris financially. I would donate all the remaining money to charity. I want to support children and the elderly because I also have a daughter and probably, like everyone else, I am afraid of old age and loneliness.

In reality, I always had enough money to be happy. Even when I worked as a teacher with a salary of six thousand rubles. I always had enough money to be happy.

Let it be Charlotte Gainsbourg. For me, she is a unique, incredibly beautiful woman. But I have not yet created a piece of jewelry to dedicate to her. One day I will definitely find one.

My sense of humor is good but I don’t want to do meme decoration, it’s not close to me. Let there be memes on the internet, let there be important and deep meanings of silver and gold.

Everyone has the right to exist. After all, artists always have a base and a sky to grow; you know where to start and where to fly.

For me, these are roses and bows, although they are quite fashionable, on the contrary, I personally do not like them. I do not want to end on such a categorical note, because I believe that every girl has the right to self-expression, so you should not be guided by other people’s tastes, you should listen to your heart.