Sofie is a textile designer who likes to create her own patterns by applying different techniques. She gets her inspiration from the interaction between the material and its environment or user. Her top qualities are weaving and serigraphs and in addition, she is a master in handling colors.

Jolien has a degree in product design so she learned how to make a functional product while taking in account the economic, technologic and human part of it. She will turn an idea into a concrete feasible product. Inspiration she finds in following trends and watching the needs and wishes of the end-user.

La Ville stands for creating new ideas and bringing them together in new, beautiful products going from interior stuff to accessories and graphic designs. It is important for us to keep authenticity within our products while taking in account the environment.

We both hope you’ll enjoy it!

Below you can find pictures of our collection based on lace collars. We were inspired by the softness of a lace pattern combined with the stiffness of leather. The material we used is leather which we then altered using a laser cutter. Our goal was to combine a more traditional look with modern techniques.

For our final collection we used 4 colours: black, white, green and blue.

Process

To find inspiration for a certain project Sofie went to Jolien for a brainstorm session. Sofie was very interested in putting an ancient craft technique into a modern application. Jolien pointed out the new trend of bib necklaces and decorated collars. Sofie took that inspiration and made her first collar made out of textile. That piece of artwork founded the base for our collection “La Ville”.

We start by making a drawing of our jewelry in Adobe Illustrator. After that we go to the Protolab at the Industrial Design Center to lasercut our designs out of the leather. Then we “clean up” the models by removing excess leather out of the holes. All the models are being washed to avoid stains and odor of the burnt leather. The jewels are now ready to be finished and assembled.

La Ville, a concept by Sofie and Jolien De Ville