Christiane Köhne: Plastic flowers don't wilt

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Christiane Köhne

Beyond fashion presents Christiane Köhne

The collection ‘plastic flowers don’t wilt’ bears a very personal reference and origins in the loss of a beloved one. The jewellery deals with the memories, the desires of this person, her preferences and death per se. But not like a wilted flower, the epitome to illustrate dying, plastic flowers are one of the basic materials and approaches.

Their half- value period is considerably longer and stands for the remembrance of a person that still exists after the death. For me it’s not mourning jewellery in a classical way, it grows out of the altercation with the loss and the shock of your own foundation.

The pieces of jewellery communicate a certain sense of lightness , which is essential for living and the being itself .

The initial points for this collection are single personal facets of this deceased person and several compounds with her, such as a certain longing for glamour, the plastic flowers, which surrounded her and the edelweiß – for me as well a sign for continuance. Yet the challenge of turning a per se cheap material into a piece of jewellery which is displaced from this inferiority, which develops it’s own value and leaves it’s original context is most thrilling for me.

Christiane Köhne (1980)