When the department stores that sold her Plant/Plant jewelry line stopped ordering at the height of the pandemic, Sae Asaoka realized she was in danger of going out of business.
“But during that time,” she said in a recent interview, “some customers asked me to remake old pieces of jewelry they had at home, or pieces that were handed down in their family.” And her new brand, Sitate — which focuses on custom work but also includes a designed collection — was born.
“During Covid, people had more time to clean and organize their houses, and discovered items they forgot,” said Ms. Asaoka, 46.
Masako Hosoi, the director of the Taro Nasu art gallery in Tokyo, was one of them. “Pebbles, tiny amulets from my favorite shrine, broken charms from necklaces, single earrings,” she wrote in an email. “Some of them are real gold, real gems, some of them are totally priceless rubbish, but for me, those are equally dearly reminiscent of old days.” She never knew what to do with them, she added, but she could not bring herself to throw them away.
After talking with Ms. Asaoka, she got the idea for the charm bracelet that she now wears on her right wrist. “Whenever I gaze at it, so many feelings come from my heart,” she wrote, mentioning the fake pearl charm that her grandmother gave her when she was 7 years old, “saying it was real with a wink, and so on.”
“In these hectic days,” she added, “this bracelet is a sort of good anchor which makes me not flow too much into the wrong direction, a small talisman to live well.”
At the request of customers, Ms. Asaoka has made several other charm bracelets, using 18-karat gold chain (380,000 yen, or $2,465), with a fee starting at ¥6,000 for each charm.
The name Sitate means “custom made” in Japanese. “It’s a word that comes from kimono tailoring,” she said. “When you tailor kimono, you need to decide the size, the embroidery pattern, the colors, everything.”
All her bespoke commissions start with an hourlong consultation at her atelier-boutique, tucked into a leafy side street in Mishuku, a neighborhood not far from the famous Shibuya Crossing. “I need to learn a lot from the customers,” she said. “For example, ‘What kind of situation are you thinking of using it?’ or ‘What kind of clothes will you wear it with?’”
Her bespoke pieces take three to five months to complete: “I’m very anxious and worried until the moment I hand the finished piece to the customer.”
As an example of a commission, she displayed a photograph of a jumble of pieces in green and white hues, mostly diamonds, pearls and what looked like an emerald, that a customer had brought to her.
“I added colored gemstones to change it up,” she said, then showing the image of the finished product, a multicolored ring.
But the emerald turned out to be fake. “We told this to the customer and she said it was an interesting and fun story, so we decided to dare to use this green stone made of glass,” Ms. Asaoka said.
That actually happens fairly frequently, she noted: “A lot of customers bring in many pieces of jewelry, and I often find fake pieces, such as glass or fake pearls. But they didn’t know, and it’s very difficult for me to tell them the truth.”
But like the ring customer, they usually want her to include the questionable items in the redesigns, she said. “After receiving the product, they start telling that story to their friends. So they obviously enjoy the background story of the jewelry, because they found out more.”
In the case of the multicolored ring, the customer now has it. But Ms. Asaoka has made a similar design for the Sitate collection that she calls the Branch ring, featuring aquamarine, yellow and orange sapphires, rubellite, green tourmalines and kunzite set on a gold branchlike structure, at ¥1.6 million.
She also displayed a strand of pearls that had been updated with a large gold clasp in the shape of a bird. “Every girl in Japan receives pearls, but they only wear them for special occasions,” she said, so she takes the classic strands and adds distinctive elements, like the clasp, to turn them into distinctive fashion accessories.
While Ms. Asaoka designs her jewelry and makes the initial wax prototypes herself, she uses specialized artisans for tasks such as the gold work and setting stones.
“Remaking jewelry takes a more dynamic approach. It requires more freedom,” she said. “And the craftsmen I work with obviously don’t like the idea of breaking down the perfection, so communication gets difficult sometimes.”
Ms. Asaoka said she actually did not like the idea of perfection and said she believed that stemmed from the eight years she spent at a jewelry company. “Everything was decided before I created the designs,” she said. “I feel like my freedom now is a reaction to being restricted for all those years.”
In 2012, she introduced Plant/Plant, inspired by her travels in Europe and the large glass greenhouses she saw there, such as the Orto Botanico in Padua, Italy; and the palm houses at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London. The line, which she still sells in her Tokyo shop, features lots of green gemstones, her favorite color.
The Sitate collection, however, is more varied, with designs inspired by animals and birds and produced in gold and platinum. One series, called Bird of Paradise that primarily featured necklaces and rings, combines platinum, yellow gold and black pearls.
As much as she loves to design, Ms. Asaoka said she found particular joy in helping clients with their keepsakes. “Only you know the value of it because it’s something that belonged to you,” she said. “It encompasses your memories and emotions.”
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