Toteme Marks Guido Mocafico Jewelry Campaign With an Exhibition
LONDON — In a world of ephemeral images, Toteme founders Karl Lindman and Elin Kling still care about beautiful images and how they’re presented.
The brand has taken over Frieze London’s permanent exhibition space on 9 Cork Street here until Saturday to showcase “Thorns,” the name of Toteme’s second jewelry collection and debut jewelry campaign.
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Italian photographer Guido Mocafico shot the images in black-and-white against desert and succulent plants such as a teasel, acacia, aloe marothii and cow’s horn plant, with the jewelry hanging off the plants.
“He’s one of my idols when it comes to photography. This is something that we feel that most people don’t do anymore because it’s all about things looking good on Instagram, but you never get the chance and the luxury of seeing things in this sort of larger than life aspect,” Lindman said in a preview interview.
“Most people who’ve seen it so far barely even see the jewelry. It’s really about the natural forms of the plants and they reflect the jewelry. The plants are actually really small, but we’ve enlarged them, making the natural world [almost] unnatural in a way and they become quite sculptural,” he added.
The jewelry collection introduced fine white gold with a half-band, half-chainlink ring; a half-cuff, half-chain bangle; discreetly diamond-studded huggie earrings, and a single double-stud earring.
One of the large prints will be put up at the Toteme store on Mount Street, which opened last December.
“The store has been doing really well and it sounds cliche, but the community is the way you interact with a town or country. Eventually, there will be a second store, but there are no plans for that [as of now],” Lindman said.
The Swedish brand has been steadily growing in a luxury market that’s currently stagnant.
As reported, the accessories category accounts for 20 percent of Toteme’s sales, and handbags is one of their fastest-growing categories.
Since November 2022, Toteme has sold about 30,000 of its T-lock bags, which range in price from 730 pounds for a cotton-blend canvas finished with black leather to 1,100 pounds for a version made with Palmellato leather.
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