Interviews
1 December 2024
It is in a workshop bathed in light near the Place de la Bastille in Paris that we meet Elia Pradel, aka Anicet Bijoux. This young 31-year-old designer benefits from premises for two years made available by the Ateliers de Paris, an incubator of the Paris City Hall. Self-taught and passionate about upcycling and jewelry, this young woman created her brand a little over 3 years ago, a label that gives a second life to jewelry that sleeps at the bottom of drawers. A quest for style and meaning that she explains to La Grande Boutique.
My passion for jewelry goes back to my youth. I was already making jewelry back then, selling it, organizing sort of Tupperware-style meetings at home. It was called “Les Bijoux d’Elia.”
I would buy Swarovski crystals and make jewelry in my room, using techniques like weaving, braiding, and so on. The designs were mostly natural forms like flowers. I grew up in Guadeloupe, so I was very influenced by the surrounding nature.
I kept doing this until I finished high school, and then I moved to Lyon to do a preparatory class and business school. Eventually, I specialized in entrepreneurship and innovation. And as we always return to our first loves, after three years of a more traditional entrepreneurial path, I decided to launch Anicet. Our concept? Revitalizing old jewelry from professional flea market dealers and giving it a second life.
When I launched Anicet, I had already been practicing “conscious” consumption for things like my clothes for about 10 years. I shop second-hand, love hunting for beautiful vintage objects and furniture for my home, and I also really love vintage jewelry. Launching this brand was the meeting of all these passions. I also wanted to offer something that pollutes as little as possible. The brand’s DNA is obviously about producing less but better with what we have at hand. And I love the idea of celebrating the memory of forgotten jewelry that lies dormant at the bottom of drawers. There’s this notion of how we pass on this memory, how we rethink it, and how we transmit jewelry that is a collection of small pieces of history that have shaped a single object. These are questions of meaning that truly inspire me.
Our upcycling work revolves around chains, particularly singular ones, with sculptural forms. The idea is really to play with the decomposition and recomposition of links, almost like the shape of a collage. The Creole identity is exactly that—it’s a collage of multiple identities, of different stories, and in each of us, in the way we exist, we are the sum of several identities that allow us to exist as individuals and affirm ourselves as people.
It’s first and foremost my father’s second name. I really wanted a connection to Guadeloupe. It’s also the anagram of the word “ancient” in English, which means “old.” Since we work with vintage jewelry, it’s a little nod to that. Finally, I wanted a name that was gender-neutral, and I think when you say Anicet, it’s not clear if it’s masculine or feminine. The idea behind the brand was to offer jewelry that could suit both men and women.
Yes, it’s very important. I like to say that if a piece of jewelry appeals to someone, it doesn’t matter whether the person is a man or a woman. It’s the same with clothing. I feel the same way about age. I have a lot of mature women who buy my jewelry because they recognize elements in my designs—like links or memories from their childhood. Yet, I work on very modern forms and aesthetics, creating contemporary pieces by combining gold with silver and mixing different chain types, etc. The idea was also to create unique and singular jewelry, but that speaks to a wide audience.
It all really starts with the search for materials, which is a crucial step because we are always looking for unique chains. We often select old gold-plated chains, a technique invented by French jewelers from the Toulouse and Bordeaux regions in the 70s and 80s. Then the idea is to play with the rhythmic structures of the pieces. Since I’ve done a lot of dance, I like to say that there are verses and choruses in jewelry. Sometimes we create repetitive forms or, on the contrary, we play with contrasts, whether between materials—gold and silver—or between shapes. For example, we might combine masculine chains with more romantic ones. Lastly, we like to work with the idea of the visible clasp, whereas typically, the clasp is hidden in a piece of jewelry.
Yes, I believe Anicet has a pretty strong identity. Our jewelry is quite sculptural and contemporary. They all rely on a play of contrasts and materials.
It’s hard for me to have a favorite piece because we’re lucky enough to work with unique pieces, which is what I love about this job. Sometimes, it’s true, we come across real gems. But if I had to choose, I think my favorites are the more understated pieces, the ones from our permanent collection. (Available on La Grande Boutique).