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'THERE’S TOO MUCH SHIT IN THE WORLD, SO I TRY TO REUSE AND RECYCLE INSTEAD OF PRODUCING MORE.' WE CHAT TO IZZI VALENTINE, FOUNDER OF MOSH
Other | Monday 14th December 2015 | Eva
Isabelle Valentine, aka Izzi Valentine, is an adorable 24 year-old with a singular edgy style. When I meet her, she is wearing baggy patterned trousers and a great brown tied up mane; she could easily have stepped out of the ’60s; a hippie fashion icon.
“I’m not interested in ‘vintage’ - that’s just a way to market old stuff, but it is good to keep existing clothing in circulation not landfill. There's too much shit in the world, so I try to reuse and recycle instead of producing more.”
She’s always had a natural inclination towards the arts from jewellery, making and customising clothes, to creating pieces from scratch, or transforming an old object into something brand new. In her childhood, her and a friend even set up a market selling their creations on the street or beach.
Izzi just recently started making jewellery out of recycled materials. After receiving compliments from several people on her pieces, she thought: “Let’s take this seriously and see what it leads to…” and so her new brand, MOSH was born. The name itself was inspired by a series of events: “mish-mosh” is the name her great-grandma gave to the random and lovely small gifts she would give her as a child, and a mosh pit is a place where everything is energetically smashed together. Coincidentally Mosh is also the name of someone who sometimes provides her with acrylic off-cuts.
And the recycling philosophy runs all the way through her life: she has mostly second hand clothing, furniture and books; even her sofa came from FreeCycle!
We stopped by for cup of tea and a chat about work and life.
How did you learn to make jewellery?
Nobody taught me to make jewellery, I learnt by playing around with materials, and dismantling broken things. Although saying that I did learn a lot when briefly assisting the inspirational Miles Chapman (xxmiles.com).
What do you use to make your jewellery?
Mostly found materials - though I use new clasps and findings so I can be sure they’ll be durable and good quality. Then these materials dictate what I make. My ideas come through messing around with objects, exploring potential uses other than the purpose they were created for. At the moment I work a lot with rubber from bike inner tubes, offcuts from laser-cutting acrylic, and various found objects. In a market recently I bought these grotesque/amazing ’60s fridge magnets of cannibalistic pigs in aprons carrying roast dinners on trays - which are now earrings; the pigs are mounted onto acrylic, backed with glitter and canvas, and edged with silver and crystal.
What made you start creating jewellery?
Jewellery is about attraction, not necessarily in a sexual way, but in terms of identity. What you wear sends a message about who you are, how you think, and often how you want to be treated. In a city like London, with a fast pace and high population density, people make very quick judgements based on appearance - in order to navigate a crowd. Displaying your identity through, among other things, what you wear draws people with similar interests towards you.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Everyday life. I come across a material that interests me, and then it’s texture, malleability and scale lead me somewhere. I like to mess around with new uses for existing things, thinking about how part of a machine could be manipulated to fit a human body, or how a single form could become a unit in a repeat design.
If you would erase a memory, which one will it be?
That’s an intense question. I think we become who we are as a result of the accumulation of all the experiences we have. I wouldn’t erase any of my memories.
Actually, I would like to be able to drink rum again.
What song best describes your work ethic?
Art-I-Ficial by X-ray Spex.
If you would have the chance to style a music artist with your creations, who would you choose?
Peaches.
So what’s your next step?
Get on with it! Make more stuff, improve my website, and find some stockists! Also I want to resolve something difficult, which is pricing, something rarely discussed openly.
It’s tricky to produce something carefully by hand, and make it beautiful, unusual and durable, while keeping it affordable. I want to make things that anyone can get hold of, but I also want to put time and energy and good materials into them - so that’s something to learn to balance.
There’s also the issue of competition in pricing - big brands undercut small designers. Marketing creates an expectation that things should be cheap and we should have lots of them. This desire can often only be met by big brands, which are able to do so through industrial scale mass production. They’re production costs are lower through economy of scale - but realistically it’s also by exploiting workers in factory production, and all the way along the material supply chain.
Get know MOSH jewellery on their website:
Photos: Jordan Ramone
Model: Daisy Madden-Wells
