Après Ski Jewelry Is Just The Thing For The Grown-Up Kid

Jewelry lines tend to pledge their allegiance to one worthy design camp—either bold looks or delicate details—but Barcelona-based brand Après Ski is proof that having one foot firmly in both realms is the ideal. Bold pieces have chunky, often-sparkly resin overlapping in simple geometric shapes and fun colors like pale yellow, sitting at the ends of delicate gold chains. Alternatively, delicate pastel-colored charms—palm trees, sailboats, a pineapple—finish an understated necklace. Designer Lucía Vergara picks up the delicate brass trinkets while traveling, which she then paints herself, in her signature pastel palate. Vergara—who worked in TV before discovering her design prowess—is influenced by nature’s plants and animals and past-looking cultural references. The resin pieces are a nod to the founding father of modern kindergarten, Friedrich Fröbel, and his children’s architecture game boxes; Czech New Wave classic Sedmikrásky appropriately inspires a muted daisy chain. Vergara says that the brand’s name and its reference to winter sports is a kind of metaphor for rewarding hard work—“I love the gifts, treasures, and prizes,” she says. Vergara thinks of her pieces as badges or medals; We can totally see them as rewards for vicarious intergalactic travel or top-notch country flower picking.