Collaboration: Derek Lam x Jamie Wolf.

Photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue; June 1, 1948 

 Derek Lam and Jamie Wolf’s new collection of jewelry, inspired by George Balanchine and called Black and White.

"One, who knew Lam liked the ballet? Turns out he has been transfixed since moving to Manhattan all those years ago and seeing his first performance of the New York City Ballet. Two, who knew something representative of an art form so associated with froth and turns and tutus could actually be strict and straight and geometric? The rhodium-plated sterling silver suites Lam and Wolf have created reflect what Lam says is the “penultimate simplicity, rigorousness, repetition, and geometry in Balanchine’s choreography. It’s incredibly beautiful in a very spare way.” (It also sounds a lot like Lam’s own aesthetic, which may be why he quoted the dancer in his fall 2011 show notes.)"

"“He had such a purist approach,” says Wolf, who, before she turned to jewelry, danced professionally with NYCB and often goes to performances with Lam. “We wanted to pay reverence to that form and isolate movements or moments in a ballet in one single piece.”

For instance, earrings with dangling parallelograms encasing an abstract Y of black diamonds mimic the angles dancers’ arms and legs make during a specific count in Balanchine’s Agon.Interlocking circles of diamonds on a necklace echo the chain of limbs of ballerinas performing Serenade. Lam and Wolf’s stripped-back interpretation, in a way, feels particularly authentic to the discipline. "

"Lam explains his reaction to any Balanchine piece: “At the gut level, it just takes me away from the day-to-day. I love it.”"

Black and White, with 20 percent of proceeds benefitting NYCB, launches April 16 and will be available at Derek Lam on Madison Avenue and jamiewolf.com.

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