Glamorous, sophisticated, and a touch insouciant, Milan’s legendary sciura (pronounced shoo-rah)—local dialect for a grande dame with confident, impeccable style—lends both her name and mystique to the U.K. designer Lucy Delius’ new capsule collection of 14k gold and diamond jewels.
Composed of 12 pieces—ranging in price from $3,100, for the Sciura connector, to $49,100, for the Sciura pavé necklace, an articulated collar whose organic contours are offset by Victorian-set pavé and bands of alternating diamond sizes—the collection pays homage to bold 1970s glamour as well as the decade’s love affair with bamboo.
Below, Delius answers our three questions.
What drew you to the sciure (plural) of Milan?
My starting point with design is always a multifaceted approach: vintage jewelry references, seeing a silhouette repeated throughout the years and how different women have connected with these designs. It’s always about celebrating jewelry and expression through this form. Films like House of Gucci, imagery of Italian women through the ages and their bold way of putting an outfit together, that laissez-faire approach to summer and winter dressing. The jewelry came first and then I considered the woman who might have worn it.
Tell us about the hero piece—are there any craftsmanship details about its making you can share?
The hero piece is our collar necklace with diamond pavé, the Sciura pavé necklace. I spent lots of time going back and forth with our workshop on how the necklace would sit on your neck. With the segments being articulated, it was really important to me that they had this organic feeling to them—moving with the body, making it comfortable to wear. The back is just as pretty as the front with cut-out work in our LD diamond shape.
Would you describe the Sciura collection as a departure from your signature style? A new direction? Help us understand how it sits in the context of the Lucy Delius world.
It’s not a departure, no. The Archetypes—the pieces I started the brand with—will always be incredibly important to me and also the business. Our best-selling pieces over the past four years have continued to be our Trombone chain and T-Bar. I see this new collection as just adding to the world; now that we are more established, there’s the opportunity to experiment and be bolder with my design choices. As I said before, it’s a celebration of jewelry, of the origin story of the pieces, and of the craft.
Top: Sciura hoops in 14k gold with diamonds, $7,400; Lucy Delius
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