Cool Hunting

by Ezra Natalia

Vice and Vanity is a jewelery design studio in Joo Chiat, Singapore where the feeling is that vice belongs "in your heart and soul." Former Club21 employee Vivi Masturah Lim and Fine Arts graduate Aaron Kao are the designers behind the collections that focus on necklaces, bracelets and brooches.

Each season, the Singaporean duo manages to push boundaries and come up with dazzling design that expresses their quirky and surreal ideas. Their collections represent anything from poetry to existentialism and beauty.

Says Aaron, "We always try to originate new ideas, never restricting ourselves to a certain style or look. Our style is a work in progress and may or may not surface so quickly over a few collections. It takes time to develop a style. For every collection we always ensure that the quality is there and we want people to pay for something that has a lot of thought and effort put into the creation."

The duo has already graced the runway with renowned fashion label Baylene and has also been scoring raves from Harper's Bazaar, Juice, Seventeen, Her World, Revolution and I-S Magazine with their original designs.

Here’s what they said about their latest collection, "We want to create collar pieces and they came from sketches of abstract shapes. It was a time when we wanted to move away from identifiable aesthetics. I realized we already had that tendency in the last collection titled 'One Two.' We also wanted to challenge ourselves to break away from the typical acrylic silhouette style adopted by many designers and to stretch a 2D raw material into an end product with more volume, dimension and layering."

Prices (in Singaporea dollars) range from $79 to $169 and necklaces come in elegant boxes, yet another aspect of Vice and Vanity's attention to detail. Designs are available from Vice and Vanity, Zainab, Talullah Tu and Mardeu. Care for the pieces requires common sense, “No crocodile attacks, nuclear fusion or genetic experiments.”