Diverse: Racoonandbabies offers eclectic collections for people of different backgrounds.

A sense of playfulness, sophistication and subtle, refined details characterizes the design of Agatha’s jewelry pieces.

The uniquely named Raccoonandbabies is more than a jewelry brand with a funky name.

Founded by Agatha Agatha, who is also its creative director, the brand embraces the past by designing jewelry with a playful, childlike touch.

Utilizing 3D printing technology among its traditional jewelry making techniques, the brand began when Agatha began combining her childhood memories of living in Jakarta and her experiences as a design student at Parsons art and design school in New York.

Though she did not study jewelry creation there — instead becoming a fashion design major — she managed to take a class that would be invaluable to her future craft in jewelry.

“I’ve always been interested in toys and 3D objects so when I studied at Parsons it really showed that I was more into jewelry than clothing. Unfortunately, at the time they didn’t have a jewelry design program,” she says, “but I was lucky enough that they let me take 3D modeling classes from another department.”

After graduating from Parsons, Agatha enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, New York, and took up jewelry studies, officially learning and honing her craft. Around this time, she also landed a job as a jewelry designer at jewelry designer Stephanie Kantis’ store in Palm Beach in Florida.

Relating to her childhood memories mostly through her sense of nostalgia for the toys she played with as a child, Agatha quickly found her own identity — one that she wanted to imprint onto her jewelry.

“I started making jewelry from toys that I found at the flea market, and one of the very first pieces that I made was a necklace from a vintage baby doll,” she recalls. 

Those first few pieces led to a characteristic that was hard to ignore. By 2012, it also led to the official naming of Racoonandbabies, which is typeset as such.

Having earned the nickname “Racoon” from her friends due to her use of heavy eye makeup, the vintage baby doll she used as necklaces were combined together as “Racoon and babies”.

“Raccoon is still is my nickname [and] people started calling me ‘the girl with a baby around her neck’”.

Aside from Indonesia, the Racoonandbabies collection is now sold in the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

With Racoonandbabies, Agatha offers a colorful variety of collections. There is Value.Able, which is inspired by “zero waste jewelry that mimics the shapes of normally disposable plastic items”; Chomp.1, which takes its inspirations from arcade video games of the 1980s; and 24.2, inspired by “the relationship between personality traits and success”, just to name a few.

This colorful variety also comes from other influences, which Agatha says includes “life experiences, travels and interactive toys and installations”.

“When I design I always think about what kind of jewelry I’d like to wear and I start from there to create the silhouettes,” she explains, adding that sometimes she also finds ideas through “seeing random objects”.

She sees jewelry as a personal experience. “It should offer an eye-catching, recognizable style” that shows the designer’s character.

Agatha also knows the importance of making sure her jewelries are immediately identifiable. “I think it’s important for designers to have strong brand identities, each appealing to different markets.”

She wants to evoke a sense of playfulness alongside sophistication, glittering with refined, subtle details.

“Valuable jewelry doesn’t have to be boring; you can have fun and playful jewelry that you can wear for any occasion,” Agatha says. “My jewelry is timeless — classic, distinctive and individual. We always use the finest quality materials so that our pieces can be enjoyed for years to come.” (ste)

— Photos courtesy of Racoonandbabies

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