Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair

For the autumn/winter 2012 collection of the Swedish fashion house Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair — then known on the runway as V Ave Shoe Repair — Alexander Lervik was invited by designers Astrid Olsson and Lee Cotter to translate his two great obsessions, light and additive manufacturing, into something worn on the body. The collection premiered at Stockholm Fashion Week and marked Lervik’s first venture into jewellery.

Every piece was modelled digitally and grown layer by layer in a 3D printer, at a time when printed objects were still a curiosity rather than a production method. Some pieces were finished in gold and silver, others were built to carry light inside them. The forms are unmistakably Lervik: ribbons and coils that seem caught mid-movement, generous cuffs roughly fifteen centimetres long and ten wide that sit on the forearm like sculpture, and a jewelled shoulder piece that dissolves the border between garment and object.

“The hardest part was understanding the fashion side of the design — that jewellery has to work on a body,” Lervik said of the project. “The most interesting thing was the collaboration itself, and the freedom to experiment in this way.”

Seen on the runway against sheer black and draped silk, the pieces became the collection’s punctuation: hard, polished, luminous. The collaboration remains a key moment in Lervik’s practice — the point where digital fabrication left the studio and walked.