Jewelry Designs on Large Scale in Hot Colors
Now that she’s the darling of the New York fashion set, Deanna Hamro, the jewelry designer from San Clemente, is like this with Bill Blass. Hamro gets calls from Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta, Carolyne Roehm. They want her earrings, her brooches, her crystal paved bracelets.
The mail to her Melrose Avenue workroom carries fabric samples and sketches from the New York collections long before anyone else sees them, so she can make jewelry to match.
Sample Earring
Hamro pins small plastic bags, with a sample earring inside, to a bulletin board. One whole row of flower-shape styles was designed originally for Oscar de la Renta.
But lately, the tall and lean retired fashion model spends her time counting infinitesimal colored crystal beads and keeping careful track of their numbers (she’s taking inventory), or she’s showing visitors the new BMW, the big one, parked outside the window of her Melrose Avenue office. “I didn’t have any car for a year,” she recalls.
Most of her jewelry is large scale, hotly colored and priced from $100 to $300. For spring, she styled anemone-shape earrings in tropical colors to wear with wide wrist cuffs that match. The first batch went to De la Renta.
For Bill Blass’ spring collection, Hamro made hand-painted or paved snakeskin wrist cuffs in turquoise or tangerine colors. This group of Navajos-in-Hollywood styles went to Blass, along with a group of ivory-like, dangle earrings with burnt-orange polka dots. The dots match those on Blass’ swatches of polka dot silk fabric.
Teardrop Dangles
A pair of industrial-scale paved gold-link earrings went first to Carolina Herrera for her fashion show. Now they are part of Hamro’s spring line. The big bows with teardrop dangles were inspired by Roehm’s look.
Hamro says: “My favorite hobbies are posing and getting dressed.” But she delivers the lines as if she were Madeline Kahn. “I went into business because I worried, after modeling, what would I do if I didn’t find a rich husband?”
That crisis was curtailed now that business is busy and she can pay off her own charge accounts. She visits her jewelry at Harrods and Browns when she travels to London. In Los Angeles, her styles are at Nordstrom and Bullocks Wilshire.
