what's in a name ?

Fancy a pave donut? How about a holly-go-lightly, or a hoop-dee-do ? One question my jewelry customers have is "where do you come up with the names?". Well, believe it or not, designing and making jewelry is hard work, but picking the names is the fun part. A lot of the names have meanings, the 'hoop dee do' refers to my mom, dorothy. Everyone around here knew her as dee, so it was a natural to get this name. If you look carefully at robertachiarella.com, you'll learn the names of my dogs, knicknames for some of the men in our lives, and which earring was designed at breakfast time.

But, sometimes things go in the other direction- one of the best-sellers in my line is the 'super sarah' which we named for sarah jessica parker. Her stylists requested samples of my jewelry for her, and they told me what she liked and what she actually wore. So, the super sarah's you see on my site got their name because she wore them. This is a photo of her wearing them, from a japanese website.

Now, we have introduced the gg xoxo necklace as a tribute to 'gossip girl' star, taylor momsen.

I watch Gossip Girl, and follow the blogs and various posts with great interest. We all have special feelings about the TV-show-next-door, they actually do a lot of the filming right here in my neighborhood. The ice-cream shop, the steps of the school, and the front door of the church (she goes to church !!) are places I walk by all the time. When they were filming some exterior shots earlier in the year, I walked the dogs about 16 times a day, to see who I could see and check out the action.

I'd read in teen vogue that Taylor Momsen doesn't have a stylist and usually does her own wardrobe, but I can't say I fully believed it. That is, until she walked into Henri Bendel and bought some jewelry. She even paid for it with her own credit card. She wore it on the show, and the wardrobe department came back to buy another necklace when they had to re-shoot a scene, it was Taylor's necklace so she had taken it home! You can tell she really liked wearing it around, more than a few people have sent me photos of 'jenny humphrey' wearing my bracelet and my necklace for photo shoots, at interviews, and on TV. So, once again we reversed the naming ritual and christened the necklace that taylor purchased the "gg xoxo". I'm not sure she knows I named it for her (or her show), but maybe she'll find out. Ciao !