Interview: Anna Hu, jewellery designer

Local blogger and fellow magazine student Darren Wee recently interviewed up-and-coming jewellery designer, Anna Hu. While you may not recognise her name, you may recognise her beautiful designs, worn by the likes of Madonna and the stars of her upcoming film, W.E. You can read Darren’s blog, Docu Blog Wales here.

Who is Anna Hu?

The Taiwanese-American jewellery designer’s first celebrity client was Madonna who wore two of her pieces to the 2009 Met Costume Institute Gala, the single most important night in fashion

Like most Taiwanese people, Anna Hu (胡茵菲) is superstitious about numbers. She doesn’t like six or eight. Hu likes nine, 999 to be precise. “I hope to make 999 pieces by the time I’m 75, nine is an auspicious number in Chinese culture,” says the jewelry de- signer, who at 34 has just finished her one hundredth piece.

Her legs crossed and perched on the edge of a sofa in Le Méridien, Hu is in Taipei for the weekend, the final stop of her two-week “inspiration trip” to London, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. From her sleek black hair, past her black jitrois dress to her black rose-embellished Valentino stilet- tos, Hu isn’t wearing a single piece of jewelry. “I am a woman of contradic- tions,” Hu offers as an explanation.

These contradictions are most obvious in Hu’s speech. She speaks fluent Chinese punctuated with slightly accented English and ends every sentence with a “yeah.” Now based in New York, Hu spent the first half of her life in the historical city of Tainan in southern Taiwan where she received a traditional Chinese upbringing. Her mother planned every second of her princess’ time, and after cram school and music lessons there was little left to watch television, play with friends or even do household chores. Her tiger mother, still protective of her cub, watches over the interview.

Jewellery design may seem a natural career choice for Hu, the daughter of a diamond dealer, but it wasn’t her first. It was Hu’s childhood dream to be a cellist, a dream that was cut short when she developed tendonitis in her right shoulder while at the New England Conservatory in Boston. “My teacher told me I could never reach perfection. I was very very depressed,” Hu says. “If I can’t be a soloist, I won’t do chamber music and I won’t do orchestra. I’m very tyrannical, I don’t share.”

The transition from music to design was natural for Hu, “Jewelry design is like musical composition, there are no borders between music and art, they are universal. I’ve gone from performer to composer.”

At the insistence of her mother, Hu battled through her degree in Cello Performance before studying Art History at Parsons and Art Administration at Columbia. On her last day at Parsons, a classmate wore a Vera Wang (王薇薇) dress to class. It was an epiphany for the young designer. Hu says in New York, Wang is a name most often associated with the restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown, not haute couture. “I thought if Vera Wang can do couture like Valentino, wouldn’t if be great if one day Anna Hu could be the Vera Wang of jewellery.” After internships at Christies, Van Cleef and Arpels and Harry Winston, Hu launched her eponymous label, Anna Hu Haute Joaillerie, in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. “Two weeks after signing the contract, Lehman Brothers collapsed. Even my parents asked me to wait another six months or a year. I said ‘Life is too short, why wait?’”

Like her predecessor, the majority of Hu’s clients are brides-to-be who come to Hu for custom-made, one-of-a-kind engagement rings. From conception to creation, a single piece can take anywhere from a few weeks to several years, a painstaking process Hu oversees in her workshops in New York and Paris. She makes no more than three or four of the same piece.

Hu’s first celebrity client was Madonna, who she recalls passed her first and only store in the landmark Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue and made an appointment. “Madonna saw the cross I was wearing and asked to try it on. I took it off and gave it to her.It was very organic.”

The queen of pop wore Hu’s diamond-encrusted “Edelweiss Cross Pendant” and a pair of her earrings to the 2009 Met Costume Institute Gala, the single most important night in fashion, and since then her creations have graced the covers of fashion magazines and red carpets from the U.S. to China. Madonna also invited Hu to design the jewelry for her second directorial effort “W.E.,” about the late American socialite and former Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson.

Hu describes her style as “classical, romantic, aesthetic and dreamy” and cites her influences as Romantic composer Beethoven, Impressionist painter Monet, French Art Deco glassmaker and jewellery designer René Lalique and her compatriot Ang Lee (李安).

All three of Hu’s major influences — classical music, Chinese aesthetics and French craftsmanship — come together in her 2010 “Oriental Deco — Turan- dot” collection. The pendants, earrings and ring incorporate black “ruyi” — a Chinese scepter — shapes and rich green, red and blue stones that mimic the circular and rectangular patterns on mahjong tiles set in white gold. It’s easy to imagine Hu talking loudly over the rattling of mahjong tiles in Chinatown, and finding inspiration for the exquisite pieces.

Like Puccini’s opera, Hu’s jewelry is a love affair between East and West. Her luxurious designs evoke the splendor of Imperial China and are meticulously crafted using French jewellery-making techniques.

Hu says the number 999 is a deliberate choice. Nine is the number of the emperor and eternity and like the emperors of ancient China, Hu is on a quest for immortality. “As a Chinese woman, I hope to make a world-respected jewelry brand. I like the number nine because I hope to go down in history.” Her fashion empire is expanding into Asia, she is opening her second store in Shanghai next year and hints at a third in the near future.

Photo courtesy of The China Post.