These Hawaiian Jewellery Designers Are Modernizing a Beloved Native Custom

Two lifelong associates, Hawaii natives, are modernizing an outdated, beloved native custom with their significant new jewellery band, HIE.

Meleana Estes and Noël Shaw, born and raised within the distant islands, have been every welcomed into the world like many Hawaiian ladies: their births marked by gold bangles engraved with their names.

All through their lives, the bracelets have by no means come off—not once they surf within the mornings, not once they run errands, or train, or take conferences, and definitely not once they welcomed their very own kids. Because the years cross, every main milestone of their lives has been celebrated with one other gold bangle engraved with a reputation, a date, or a phrase that communicates the significance of the second.

The melodic jingle of those bangles is an iconic Hawaiian sound, one that the majority, if not each Hawaiian can simply establish because the soundtrack of their lives on the islands—and, for many who depart, the sound of their childhood.

“I could not go to a child luau or commencement get together or household gathering of any form with out listening to the clinking and clanking of the gold bracelets worn by all of the aunties and friends,” Gossip Lady actor Evan Mock, one other Hawaii native, recollects to BAZAAR.com.

Whereas Estes and Shaw grew up surrounded by grandmothers, aunties, moms, and associates, all with their very own private bangles, they are saying that over time, these conventional items of jewellery merely stopped being made. The buddies started questioning the place they’d all gone, however it wasn’t till Estes misplaced her beginning bangle just a few years in the past at a seaside and had no concept the place to discover a new one which she and Shaw received the concept for HIE: their stunning new model of recent Hawaiian bracelets.

Mock, who now lives in New York Metropolis and has his personal streetwear model, Wahine (which suggests “Hawaiian lady”), was one of many first main supporters of HIE and already has his personal assortment of smooth bangles. Like many natives, even when he is away from the islands, he seeks consolation in his reminiscences of them. He says that when within the mainland, he hosts “large dinners consisting of dishes handed down from my grandparents and fogeys,” as a result of it makes him really feel nearer to dwelling.

That sense of acquainted ease is without doubt one of the many feelings Estes and Shaw wish to convey with their bracelets. The items, designed completely by the duo, are clean, flat, pure gold bangles, impressed by custom, however with a classy and trendy twist. Not like the originals, HIE bracelets (the identify means “to beautify”) are made to be personalized—enamel filling or plain, textual content or no textual content, with or with out designs (of native symbols and flowers), diamonds or no diamonds. One standout piece incorporates a masonic image from one of many late Queen Lili’uokalani’s bracelets; it is that means being, “Defend me and defend these I defend.”

“It turns into your defend, your armor, and your good luck attraction,” Shaw, who inherited an 1881 bangle from a relative that was shut associates with the queen, says. “However it’s quiet, and only for you.”

Estes provides, “It would not essentially scream, ‘Hawaii,’ it would not must have a flower on it, it is simply one thing that you understand inside has an origin right here.”

Whereas the bracelets typically mark events reminiscent of weddings, births, or graduations, they will also be symbols of remembrance when one loses a cherished one. Their many emotional layers are virtually like the various meanings of aloha: “hey, goodbye, love, soul, spirit, a full life.”