In conversation withLizzie Mandler
Designer Interview
10·01·2023
Los Angeles-based Lizzie Mandler is a firm believer in using diamonds to elevate the everyday. Since 2021, she's been designing clean, modern jewelry with a focus on white diamonds and 18-karat gold, all handmade in downtown LA. Her latest collection, Eclat, was an idea born of the compass setting designed to maximize radiance, and a desire to update classic pieces with a new and contemporary look.
French for 'sparkle', the Eclat collection puts the diamond front and center for contemporary glamour that's never flashy. Compass-set stones glitter between elongated gold knife-edge links, burn bright around the wrist in a graduated tennis bracelet, and fall delicately from the lobe as diamond drops. Lizzie told us more about how the collection came to life.
What were your inspirations for the Eclat collection?
For better or for worse, my collections usually don't start with one major idea and build out from there. It's more of slow evolution, I start to pick up bits and pieces and patterns that emerge in new pieces I design, and at some point, those small details evolve into their collections.
I have always worked heavily with diamonds in the collection, and slowly this signature compass setting was appearing more and more as I started to focus on larger stones. The compass setting has all the features I love; it's clean, minimal, architectural, and with the prongs oriented in the compass pattern it's just a little bit different. After using a compass-style setting for a few seasons, I decided to turn the Eclat pieces into my variations on the ubiquitous tennis bracelet - but with a more modern twist.
Eclat explores the radiance of diamonds. What draws you to the diamond in particular?
The French word éclat translates to 'sparkle' or 'brilliant'. The idea behind the collection was to create diamond-forward pieces, not to have diamonds as an accent to a gold chain or ring, but to make them truly the centerpiece of each jewel in the collection.
I have always loved diamonds, I have never found a stone that draws me in the way a diamond does. While I appreciate the beauty of other stones, the ability diamonds have to play with light and reflection and create such fire and a spectrum of color out of what is otherwise a 'clear' material, just mesmerizes me.
The diamond link earrings feature the Lizzie Mandler knife-edge links. How does Eclat evolve your signature look?
When we mix the Eclat settings with our signature gold chains it offers breathing space in an otherwise metal-heavy piece. The diamonds not only create an actual break in the chain but their reflective quality and brilliance are almost a palate cleanser to the heavier gold chains.
I love the dichotomy of using such a delicate and minimal setting, with such a heavy chain.
“ I have always loved diamonds, I have never found a stone that draws me in the way a diamond does. “
What are your favorite pieces in the collection?
This is tough. I wore the five and seven-drop earrings to my wedding, and I wear the alternating double drops in my ear daily, but the show stopper has to be the graduated Eclat bracelet. It has such presence and the graduation of the stones is so smooth it creates movement, or flow to the piece. The central .25ct diamonds aren't bad either!
Who - real or imagined - would you like to see wearing the Eclat collection?
That's really hard, too - the Eclat lends itself so well to a moment of glamour, but I also really love seeing clients incorporate these diamond-forward pieces into their every day, it takes away some of the preciousness. So I would love to see anyone wearing these jewels all the time, really adopting them as part of a jewelry wardrobe. I've said it one hundred times before and I'll say it one hundred times more - diamonds are meant to be worn!
