Lara Kurtzman: The Alchemist of Wearable Art
Lara Nadel
From RISD costume design to the jewelry that made her name as Lara Kurtzman, and on to the leather atelier she now builds with her husband. The story of Kelacala Q, and what came after.
Why this conversation
Lara is one of those people whose jewelry I noticed before I knew she had made it, and then learned, every time, that of course she had. She trained at RISD, built fantastical worlds for the stage, and then turned that theatrical instinct loose on the body, founding Kelacala Q and quietly becoming a name that fashion people traded between themselves. What I love is that she never stopped following the work. It led her from etched silver to a leather atelier, and from Kurtzman to Nadel. This is the story of a designer who treats every piece as a talisman, and who has never once mistaken the minutiae for the vision.
I Was My Own First Customer
Lara grew up in New York, going on jewelry expeditions with her mother up to the Jewelry District, and developed an early love for adornment alongside a frustration with the industry's lack of edge. Everything felt over-branded and rigid, she says. She wanted pieces that felt alive, that told stories. So she became her own designer, making one-of-a-kind work that caught the eye of Patricia Field, Mads Kornerup and Gerard Yosca, and before long Kelacala Q was born, less a corporate entity than an organic extension of her creative pulse. Forming the company, she laughs, was just a way to corral the chaos. The real drive was always the art. Her work has since travelled through magazines, films and runways, onto bold-face names including Dr. Dre, Rihanna and Stacy Keibler, and into the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which in 2011 was first to spot her cheeky Kama Sutra collection.
The Kama Sutra pieces are pure Lara: entangled figures etched with enough restraint that some wearers never clock the subject, and the double-takes from those who study them a little closer are, she promises, priceless. It is a neat summary of how she works, designing not for a trend but for the kind of person who treats a piece of jewelry as a story they get to carry around.
I wanted pieces that felt alive, that told stories.Lara Nadel
From the conversation
How did you first start designing jewelry?
I have been designing and making jewelry since I was young, and my mother had a huge impact on me, with regular trips up to the Jewelry District in Manhattan. At Rhode Island School of Design I got more serious about the creative and artistic side of it. After I graduated, and did my obligatory stint in the creative department of an ad agency, I started my own design and production company, Kelacala Q. As well as our own lines, we create work for dozens of boutiques and national retail chains.
Your greatest inspirations?
Inspiration is like breathing in the world, a sacred exchange between you and everything that moves you.
- ArtFlorine Stettheimer's whimsy, Frida Kahlo's raw emotion, Francis Bacon's distortion.
- MusicJanis Joplin's soul, Prince's audacity, Bowie's metamorphosis.
- FashionAlber Elbaz at Lanvin, Christian Lacroix's baroque romance.
- NatureBirds in flight, bioluminescent sea creatures, cosmic nebulae.
Who is the Kelacala Q person?
- Unapologetically themselves. "I design for people who wear three necklaces at once, just because."
- Storytellers. "Jewelry should be a conversation starter."
- Drawn to the mystical. "I love semiotics, how symbols carry meaning across cultures."
The challenges of running the business?
- Creative vs CommercialStaying innovative while navigating manufacturing contracts is a tightrope walk.
- Retail whimsDepartment stores can be eccentric partners.
- The big pictureYou cannot let the minutiae drown the vision.
But then, she grins, I will see someone on the street wearing my work, or spot it in a film, and it all makes sense.
Do you have a favourite piece, and plans to expand the range?
My real favourite is the first one I made, the bracelet. It is so raw and elemental, and it is a piece I can wear every day with literally any kind of outfit. It gets tons of compliments from people who do not even notice the subject of the etchings, and the looks I get from those who study the figures a little closer are absolutely priceless. I am definitely expanding the collection, and I think the next series of etchings will move towards higher reliefs and more specific anatomy. I have already created gay and lesbian variations of the panels, and I would like to expand on both.
Lara's New York?
Favourite boutiques (that also carry Kelacala Q)
- Sucre, 357 Bleecker St. "Candace Mohr has a radar for genius."
- Ibiza, 825 Broadway. "French bohemian dreams."
- Jodi Arnold, 56 University Pl. "Architectural elegance."
- Patricia Field's. "A black hole for credit cards."
Vintage havens
- Exquisite Costume, 377 Broome St.
- What Goes Around Comes Around, 351 W Broadway.
Three things you cannot live without?
- Drawing materials. "My lifeline."
- A camera. "To capture the world's weird beauty."
- Cayenne pepper. "Food is art too."
Kelacala Q to Moses Nadel
In 2012, visiting a gallery in Hudson, New York, where she was selling her work, Lara came across a series of handbags and was anxious to meet the designer. A studio visit the next day turned out to be the start of a lifelong working, business and personal partnership with the man who would become her husband, Moses Nadel. Together they decided to pool their skills and build a brand under his name. The two decades she had spent running a jewelry company in Manhattan, picking up advertising, costume design, styling and accessories along the way, had quietly trained her for exactly this, the jack-of-all-trades reality of building something from nothing.
They relocated to Sea Cliff, a small coastal town on the north shore of Long Island, and rebuilt the MOSES NADEL atelier there with a small team of local artisans who tailor make every item one at a time. Over the years the brand matured in unexpected ways. What began as leather and metal accessories grew into a branded collection and a line of luxury custom home interiors, among them their ball-shaped shearling and leather ottomans, carefully filled with micro-foam, which is harder than it sounds. Sticklers for detail, they refuse to gloss over the natural variations in the hides, working instead to incorporate the inconsistencies and nuances of different skins and tannages into something luxurious that still functions. Lara handles brand development, creative direction and the intricacies of technical construction. The process, they say, is organic, devoted to elemental purity and artistic simplicity carried out with an exceptional level of refinement.
I have infinite respect for indie designers. We're the ones keeping fashion human.Lara Nadel
Lara Nadel does not just adorn bodies, she forges talismans for the fearless. Whether it is a piece glimpsed in a film, a stranger spotted wearing her work on Twelfth Street, or a hide cut and stitched by hand in a Long Island workshop, the through-line is the same. Make the thing that feels alive, and trust that the world will catch up.
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