Harumi Klossowska de Rola

Artist Balthus' daughter on Jewels, Nature and Paris

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After meeting John Galliano in her early twenties, Harumi Klossowska de Rola left London for Paris to join the fashion designer – then a recent graduate of Central Saint Martins – and his fedgling team at their small studio in the rue de la Roquette. Starting out as an intern, Klossowska de Rola quickly rose to the role of PR assistant, all the while enjoying the many diversions the city had to offer. "It was my first time in Paris, she remembers. "I was quite excited to be running around. Maybe after the second year, I really wanted to do something else. I think that’s why I left the fashion world; I wanted to concentrate on something that would suit me more."

Klossowska de Rola turned her attention to fine jewellery; her first designs combined semi-precious stones with trimmings of oriental fabrics. "I was very inspired by the Italian Pre-Renaissance; artists like Piero della Francesca," she says. The delicate colours of her passementerie-like creations were also influenced by the many Chinese buttons collected by her mother, Setsuko Ideta, a painter and second wife of Polish-French modernist artist Balthus.

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