This piece by Claudia Schergna is a wonderful addition to the Local Profiles section of The Islington Storyteller. This time, we take a deep dive into a one-woman undertaking revolving around the craft of collecting, curating and reintroducing antique brooches into everyday fashion.
note from the editor
Iconic, stylish and timeless – brooches are the ultimate fashion statement. If you’re looking for that extra, classy, edgy addition to your outfits you need to dive into the magic world of Audra’s brooches. Whether they are worn in the hair, on the neckline, pinned to the waist of a gown or scattered over all styles of jackets, brooches are making their way out of grandma’s drawer into the red carpets and trendy high streets. The oldest piece of jewellery ever made, brooches have acquired all kinds of purposes and meanings throughout history. From closing coats, they came to be souvenirs those going on the Grand Tour would take home; from being worn as mourning jewellery, they became a common gift soldiers would give to their loved ones as they marched off to the First World War. And the list goes on.
Meet Audra Daws-Knowles
“Fashion-wise, they come in and out, a bit like the poncho,” says Audra Daws-Knowles, the creator of Audra’s Brooches, a curated collection of antique, vintage and retro jewellery, sourced from all over the world and based in North London.
Only one minute into our conversation, it already became evident what drives the success of Audra’s business: a genuine love for her vocation. Audra talks about her brooches and pins with contagious enthusiasm you might find in someone on their first day in a new job, but combined with the knowledge of someone who has spent a lifetime sourcing, studying and collecting those amazing pieces of jewellery.
Brooches have evolved many times in Audra’s and her family’s lifetime. As she fervently explains: “Their peak apparently was in the 50s, and even into the 60s, and then in the 70s they dropped and became literally an old lady accessory. My mom would never wear one.” But Audra did. As a teenager in the 80s, she witnessed (and contributed) to the great comeback of this accessory.
Not only would she wear them, but with time Audra also started collecting them. In a matter of a few years she found herself owning hundreds of brooches and pins: “When a family member died, I got the brooches. If I went to a car boot sale, or there was a sale at the church, I went and I bought brooches. No one wanted them, but I did.”
Inevitably Audra became an expert in the subject, but she kept it as a hobby until 2017, while switching careers several times, from teaching to marketing, from business consulting to window design.
Getting down to business
Audra’s passion for vintage also extends to books, clothes, and furniture, but when she started thinking about making one of those things her full-time job, she knew it had to be brooches.
“I was looking for a business that was niche, portable, and could have an online presence.” Selling her brooches just seemed like the most natural thing to do.
In 2017 Brooches Pins and Clips Limited was born, finally giving Audra’s lifelong passion a trading name, which she then changed into Audra’s Brooches when she opened her virtual shop on Etsy and started selling on eBay and physical markets.
“Etsy is a good platform because it’s forgiving,” explains Audra, “but also has very rigorous standards. And there’s lots of support. There are a million videos of how to take a cute photo of your crochet!”
If finding the right idea for a business came naturally, finding stock turned out to be challenging at first: “I was selling ladies’ collections, which is such an honour. Honestly, the worst thing is that you die and your 400 brooches just get sold in stock on eBay.”
Then the pandemic happened. As a small, newborn business owner, not being able to go to markets to meet buyers and sellers, clipped Audra’s wings. But during that unfortunate time, she received a rewarding surprise: “We had lockdown here in London, and when that Vogue issue came out and I was in it, I couldn’t even celebrate!”
Seeing her collection in such a prestigious publication gave Audra the motivation to keep going. She was able to take a loan, furlough her employee and invest all her time and energy into her website and social media. Lockdown forced Audra to up her online game. Having a strong online presence meant Audra had no more issues finding stock. The first big deal she signed was with a lady in her 80s, with a history of working in the jewellery industry and collecting vintage pieces. She sold her a 60-years-career worth of brooches to Audra. Sellers, from different countries and backgrounds, started approaching as well and selling their generous stocks of brooches.
Having so much to choose from meant Audra could refine the selection process. Whether a brooch makes it or not into her collection is a matter of quality, current trends, and trying to find the fine balance between what she likes and what she thinks customers will.
The criteria is: do I like it? I have to like it enough for it to be on my table. I need to believe this is a good choice for you
Audra
“I try to think: what are people wearing? What’s in fashion now? What’s in the movies? And then I’m choosing brooches that suit those looks.” She also collects some evergreens, and brooches with classic, symbolic motifs that make great gifts, no matter the trend in vogue.
The collection
Her curated collection features many British-designed brooches from the 50s to the 80s, manufactured and designed here in London. “Then I have Victorian silver, which is usually British silver, especially Scottish, from the 1850s to the 1980s. Those are some of my favourites.”
A very special segment of the collection comes from a maker called Jakob Bengal. The Bauhaus and Art Deco-inspired brooches from the 1930s were manufactured in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, before the Second World War. “In this case, it was really important to look at provenance because those pieces were made at a very terrible time in history.” The factory remained intact and is now a museum featuring international jewellery designers and exhibits of modern jewellery.
Even a quick browse through Audra’s website shows how much research lies behind the images of shining gemstones and precious metals. Brooches are divided into categories and every one of them features a brief description of the symbolic meaning, its date and its designer. Customers can also learn about brooches from her blog.
Identifying the provenance of a brooch is everything but a piece of cake. Audra would use a loupe to read any inscription or numbers, which are not visible to the naked eye. That would generally tell a rough date on which the pin was produced. Being the first form of jewellery even made, brooches have so much history.
I learned all about how to date silver from different countries, to recognise the different hallmarks and different brands of costume jewellery.
Audra
While researching the provenance of brooches, Audra feels she’s somehow connecting with the people who made them and wore them in the past.
“There’s a brand called Sphinx of England, based in West London,” starts telling Audra. “They would make big brooches, with tonnes and tonnes of stones glued in. Like a big biscuit with chocolate chips. I was still washing them with soap and water, and blow-drying them as I always do. But sometimes the stones would just shoot off.”
Audra couldn’t wrap her head around why that would only happen to some of the brooches, while the others would be in perfect condition. She thought they must have changed the glue formulation. She then found out that stones were glued in by setters, women who would take hundreds of brooches home as a side job. If the setter didn’t do a good job, the stones are likely to pop out. It was this realisation that she is helping give a second life to the craft of each of those women that gave Audra additional encouragement to keep on with her business project.
Keeping up with the times
“There are two reasons why people wouldn’t buy brooches,” explains Audra. “Because they are afraid of losing them or because they are too heavy for modern clothes.” While the first problem has no real solution, Audra came up with a hack to solve the second one.
It’s not easy to wear brooches in contemporary outfits: fabrics are too thin, and people don’t wear coats in the office because of central heating. “I give people a sponge just to be put behind the fabric of any clothing, cashmere, silks, cotton, whatever you’re wearing.” With the sponge, brooches can be worn on any outfit, whether it’s vintage, vintage-inspired or modern.
This trick gives even more flexibility and freedom to express their style. Because brooches really are for everyone. “Brooches are genderless and can embellish any outfit.”
She describes them as another layer on top of one’s identity, style and fashion. They can tell people many things about the wearer, they can draw people in, and they can draw people out. They amplify, they decorate, and they enable self-expression. They are “an exclamation mark to a fashion statement,” as Audra dubbed them.
What makes Audra so extremely inspiring to talk to, is the way she combines her lifetime passion with her strong head for business. The balance between these two elements is often hard to achieve: too much marketing jargon can make a business dry and obscure the real essence of what it is offering, and too little might not reach the right audience. Audra has acquired all of this wisdom without losing her initial excitement, her sharp sense of taste and that curious spark in her eyes which makes her thrive in work and life.
You can meet Audra and see all of her vintage brooches at Canopy Market, King’s Cross, N1C every Friday, Saturday and Sunday or check out her collection online.
Written by Claudia Schergna
Photographs by Sandra Arellano
