Our Story | Kate & Kole | Australian Lab-Grown Diamond Jewellery

One early decision has shaped everything since. From the very beginning we worked only with lab-grown diamonds and recycled metals. In 2015 that was an unusual choice for a fine jewellery brand. It was not a trend we were following. It was simply how we wanted to make things, which means we have never had to walk it back or explain it away. It is still the foundation of every piece we make.

Then came the year everything happened at once. We both stepped away from our other work to commit to Kate & Kole fully. We moved from a thirty square metre studio into a three hundred square metre one. We went from a team of two to a team of twenty. And we were both pregnant at the same time. It was a lot, and it was wonderful, and we would not change a moment of it.

Our studio in Honeysuckle is the heart of everything. It was important to us that it never feel like a shop. We design there, we hold appointments there, and our jewellers make there, all in the same room. Almost every piece is made to order in our studio, here in Australia, for the person who will wear it. When you come in to choose a ring, you can look across the studio and watch yours take shape. The people drawing your design, the people sitting with you, and the people at the bench are part of the same room and the same conversation. Very little in fine jewellery works this way, and we think you can feel the difference.

A few years ago we began taking that experience further afield. Our Residencies bring Kate & Kole to other cities for a few days at a time, in spaces chosen to suit each one. It was an unusual thing for an Australian fine jewellery brand to do, and it came from a simple wish. We wanted to sit across from the couples who could not easily come to us, and give them the same afternoon, the same care, the same glass in hand.

Eleven years on, the two of us still make every meaningful decision together. Sara leads design, and cares about every part of how a piece is made and how it feels to choose one, from the weight of the packaging to the way a ring sits on the finger. Maddy leads creative direction and brand, and shapes how all of this is told and seen. One thing we are really proud of is how clear and steady our brand has been since the very first collection, and how little of it we have had to change. That is Maddy's doing. Her aesthetic direction was there from the beginning, and it still sets the tone for everything we make. We are different people, and Kate & Kole has always been better for it. We have grown alongside each other through all of it, and the studio has only ever been as good as that partnership and the respect underneath it. We are proud to have built a female-led studio, and prouder still that it feels much the same as it did at the beginning, only with more people we love around us.