As a child, I was quite determined. No matter the obstacle, I was going to overcome it by working laboriously and relentlessly pushing as hard as I possibly could. My dad would look to me with a mixture of pride and absolute despair.
“Aishleen,” he would say, “sometimes you have to learn not to push so hard. That thing that you want has also got to want you. You have to allow life to take its own shape and move towards you. If it is meant to be yours, it will be yours.”
When it came to designing my first engagement collection, I started with the question: “well, what is love?” Honestly, I had no clue how to express it. Love can be a messy emotion, difficult to pin down – it swirls around, dimming and growing and yet you know when it is there. It is allusive. As ever I worked hard, producing hundreds of prototypes, trying to put a form to love, but none of them felt right. My dad’s words came to mind: “allow life to take its own shape and move towards you.”
I realised that love is not something to be defined and put in a box but more an energy that cannot be forced, and one with its own momentum and significant connection to fate. My job is to realise that sense of potential movement and life through form.
A continuous flowing line of gold gently wraps around a perfectly-cut diamond. Their forms become one, giving the illusion that stone and metal, just like the couple it celebrates, are Meant to Be.
Love is an energy that cannot be forced, it has its own momentum “if it is meant to be, it will be"
