Since she launched her collection in 2003, Zurich-born, Geneva-based jeweler Suzanne Syz has opened her own boutique on Geneva’s Rue Céard and entered the international arena with exhibitions at London’s Hauser & Wirth gallery and Moscow’s Triumph Gallery. New York, however, has proven somewhat more elusive for the flame-haired Swiss designer — until now. This week, Syz, who used to live here in the early Eighties, finally exhibits her collection in New York with a “City Lights” presentation at the Marianne Boesky Gallery on East 64th Street. “This is very emotional for me,” she says. “It’s like an official coming back.”
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There’s a reason she chose Boesky’s gallery for her return showcase. Aside from being a collector of contemporary art with her banker husband Eric — they have their own in-house curator and own works by Vanessa Beecroft, Guy Bourdin and Francesco Clemente — Syz considers her years spent in New York crucial to her approach to jewelry design. During that time, as a recent newlywed in the city, she rubbed elbows with renowned gallerist Annina Nosei, art dealer Bruno Bischofberger and the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “I was in heaven,” Syz says, before launching into a series of Eighties-era anecdotes. Among the more memorable: meeting Basquiat for the first time over dinner. “He loved telling dirty jokes, and I was really good at telling dirty jokes, so we had good fun,” recalls Syz. “I was laughing, and I have these big teeth. He started drawing my teeth on a napkin. I still have it.” And then there was the time Syz requested that Warhol redo her commissioned portrait because he initially painted her with her lips closed. “It took all my courage, because he was the big Andy, and I was this very young girl,” recalls Syz. “But I thought, I want to one day gift this to my son, and I’m not one of these chic Fifth Avenue portrait ladies. I’m somebody who laughs, and I wanted him to do me as I am, laughing.”
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Her entrée into jewelry design didn’t begin until long after her move to Geneva in 1985; her husband had landed a job there. “It ended up being a good move,” she says, with a laugh. “He has his own bank now [Banque Syz & Co.].” Syz began dabbling in jewelry only because, as a frequent fine-jewelry client, she couldn’t find enough “fun stuff for me.” By 2000, she formed her eponymous firm and, three years later, presented her debut collection of whimsical finery. “My time in New York, in that art scene, really influenced my work and my sense of color,” Syz remarks, noting that because she was never formally trained as a jeweler, she’s much freer with color and form. Hers is an anything-goes, costume-jewelry approach to fine jewelry.
To wit, in reviewing the 40-some pieces in “City Lights,” “fun” remains at the heart of the collection, the majority of which is priced from $10,000 to $100,000 and can go upward to $500,000, retail. Syz designed a diamond, pearl, white gold and titanium bracelet to look (and stretch) like a Slinky spring and crafted oversize hoop earrings in the shape of barbed wire. The latter, she adds, was inspired by a hip-hop video she saw while at the gym. “I thought, why can’t barbed wire be funky and extremely chic?” she says. And the whimsy continues: earrings in the shape of actual chandeliers, gemstones carved as Life Savers candy bracelets and floral cocktail rings in which the petals actually quiver. “I like to take the seriousness out of jewelry,” notes Syz. Even her more classic designs flaunt a playful side — the 180-carat yellow sapphire and diamond cocktail ring that flips to show both sides of the stone, for instance. Moreover, most of her earrings are mismatched sets, as in her diamond, sapphire, garnet and paraiba tourmaline studs shaped like button clusters — one side is blueish, the other, a brownish red. That design, by the way, stems from yet another collection of hers: Syz’s personal archive of vintage buttons.