A GREAT EYE
London-based jewellery company Katzi, still embraces classic jewellery designs, but always tries to give them a contemporary makeover. Angela Scoon has run the company dreams up all the designs, her five employees' piece together all the jewellery. Working with Swarovski crystals and manufactured pearls, freshwater pearls from China and silver from Italy, France and Germany, they create beautiful tiaras, bracelets, earrings and necklaces. Most end up in the 120 bridal shops they regularly supply around the British Isles, and a small number are destined for the stores in Dubai, Malta, Scandinavia and the USA. Angela says business is so good that her turnover has doubled every year since she started. Her retail prices range from £8.99 to £285.
“I’m happy to design for brides across the board,” Angela says when asked what kind of customers she imagines are wearing her jewellery. “It makes it more exciting and more of a challenge. It gives me more scope to design.”
She tries as much as possible to consult with those designing the dresses in the shops she supplies. “Before the dress collections come out I’ve already talked to them about the look they’re trying to achieve,” she says. Alan Hannah, Sasha James and Hollywood Dreams are some of the designers she has collaborated with.
Angela listens closely to the bridal shop owners too. It’s important because they’re the ones out there listening to the brides,” she explains. “It was a retailer who first asked me to design tiaras.”
Angela has been in the jewellery industry since she was a child. At the tender age of eight she started helping her mother who ran a small boutique in Islington, North London. Its prime location meant that various 1960s celebrities were often poking their nose through the doors. “Princess Margaret, Frank Sinatra, Roger Moore…”
After her mother retired, Angela then designed jewellery for shops in the capital. It wasn’t until 2002 that she eventually established Katzi. The name was derived from the initials of her five children’s first names.
It was thanks to one of her three daughters that she first started specialising in bridal jewellery. Her youngest, Tirzah, had studied the harp at music school and regularly performs at weddings and other functions around the country. “I used to drive her to these weddings and naturally started looking at the sort of dresses and jewellery the brides were wearing,” Angela explains. “A dress designer I met at one wedding suggested I make jewellery especially for brides. It all took off from there.”