A Q&A with Ben & Paul, Atelier Domingo‘s co-founders.
Tell us a little about your background.
We are two 90s kids who grew up in the South of France. We met at university in Bordeaux, in the Southwest of France, fifteen years ago and became friends immediately!
We were already sharing many passions back in the days: we found out we were both loving the same iconic figures mostly inspired by urban cultures, from hip-hop music to sports and fashion. We were both wearing Air Force 1, admiring De Niro and Al Pacino, listening to Miles Davis and Notorious BIG, dreaming about driving a classic Range Rover or an old Porsche 911, and getting excited by Michael Jordan and Thierry Henry! A common love for the Mediterranean lifestyle gained from childhood summers spent at the Sea or in Marseille were also ties that bounded us very quickly.
Later, each of us followed his own corporate path that had little to do with jewelry, and where we could not express fully our creativity. However, it helps us today to run a business. It has been also an opportunity to travel abroad and live in cool places such as Barcelona, Australia, and the US.
We do not have any academic education or professional experience in the jewelry industry or even in design and fashion, but… when there is a will there is a way! We did not give up our dream and the launch of our first collection has been an achievement we are very proud of.
What inspired you to start Atelier Domingo’s?
First, we could not find a jewelry brand that matched our styles and personalities. Thus, we took the challenge to create our own brand: a brand that would bring together elegant, simple, and timeless aesthetics as well as the urban references that inspire us.
With Atelier Domingo’s we want to pay tribute to our undying love for arts and music, our admiration for New York and its culture as well as our own Mediterranean heritage.
More, through Atelier Domingo’s, we have a place where we can express our creativity, our tastes, and our personalities, from jewelry design to photo shooting.
Note that when we met in college, we were watching a television series named How to Make It in America: two enterprising young New Yorkers who hustle to launch their brand of jeans from scratch. It surely planted a seed in our minds that might have inspired us to launch Atelier Domingo’s more than a decade later – or at least made us believe it was possible.
What’s the philosophy behind the brand and what makes your products unique?
The idea behind Atelier Domingo’s is to stay true to ourselves. We put a lot of us into our collections. We design the pieces ourselves – the two of us. Our creative process starts with sketches made by hand. Once we are happy with the designs on paper, we create a wax prototype to get a more accurate impression of the result and to be able to make some adjustments or approve our original idea. Then, comes the time of the metal samples that permit us to make the final trials. We are involved at each step of the process and are lucky to collaborate with an experienced craftsman from Spain who not only has great skills and talent but also understand our vision.
We refuse to follow the fashion fads; instead, we aim to create timeless designs that are really reflecting who we are. Each piece carries a true meaning – a meaning that we keep in mind during our creative process.
By doing so, we want to encourage others to express their true personality as well and remind that jewelry has always been a way for humans to express their own values and personality.
What public figure (recording artist, film star…), past or present, do you feel best represents the overall style of the brand?
Nas! Nas embodies NYC, our favorite city and a huge source of inspiration for us. The albums he released in the 90s are real classics. Not only do we love the elegance of this music, but we admire his consistency as well. Of course, his music evolved with the years, but he manages to keep being successful while staying faithful to his roots and who he is rather than trying to mimic the trend of the moment.
Leave us with a motto that the company will always believe in.
Stay true to yourself!
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