Released from Love is the anti-jewellery jewellery label challenging everything we know

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2nd Oct 2019

How might we approach our jewellery as a mouthpiece? Photographer Hannah Roche and philosopher Lachlan Malone, who founded their brand Released from Love in 2019, are lending the proverbial microphone to their jewellery, hoping to arouse this very question in their customers when they hang their made-to-order pieces from their ears or necks.

After training in traditional jewellery making in the Southern Highlands and developing a mutual love for the craft, Roche and Malone applied their know-how to design each other’s wedding rings when they married last year. In an organic turn (as the name suggests) into a professional project, they set out to fuse their interests and share their wares with the world in a way that riffs on popular jewellery trends and hopefully gets us talking. Below, the designers chat to about their hopes for the brand, why jewellery is ripe for disruption and how they distill an unending stream of ideas into delicate, wearable pieces.

“Jewellery is a culturally conditioned thing; it’s meant different things throughout history and culture. It’s represented different power dynamics, different ideologies, different aesthetic standards,” explains Malone, who is hopeful the brand’s pieces will become similarly symptomatic of a certain time and set of values. “Our biggest goal is to create something that feels familiar enough that it doesn’t push someone away, but also progresses their idea of something forward.” 

These opposites converge in a collection of core pieces designed according to 10 aesthetic commandments the designers formulated for themselves when they founded the brand. “These are things we care about,” explains Malone, springing to mind commandment one, for example, that states that all of the jewellery must be gender neutral, or commandment eight, that explains that every piece will be ethically made. Together, these inform the basis of necklaces and earrings that are equally beautiful and thought-provoking, but engagement with the ideas from which they germinate rests in the wearer’s discretion. As Roche explains: “If our jewellery relates to [our customer] on a fundamentally aesthetic level and they just really like it, that’s great. But if they want to read about what’s important to us as a brand, then we have that there for them [too].”

Even for the purists though, who might be satisfied by the jewellery’s appearance alone – Roche identifies Released from Love’s aesthetic as “quietly ostentatious” – the brand’s ability to inflect each piece with a dose of humour, and ensure every step of the process from ideation to delivery is sustainable, deserves closer inspection. Freshwater pearl drop earrings and baroque pearl necklaces serve as two such examples. Ironically rendered in recycled silver, both pieces play up the resurgence of pearls seen everywhere on and off Instagram, while speaking out against unethical pearl farming simultaneously. “We try to make every piece in a way that is practical to wear, looks beautiful but has a concept that is either lighthearted or fun or really challenges something,” explains Malone. Roche adds: “Hopefully, we can educate our customers a little bit, and other jewellers as well.”  

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To ensure the brand is doing its part, Released from Love uses exclusively recycled materials and FSC-certified packaging. All samples are melted down again and repurposed to make pieces anew, with scrap metals regularly donated or exchanged for alternative materials. It’s clear that for both designers any and all output must be considered, yes, but considerate, too.  “We want pieces that will be worn and loved as much as possible now,” explains Malone. “[But] they can be re-gifted, they can be given down, passed down the line. That’s [the intention behind] how everything is made.”