Artist and jewelry designer Stephanie Kopelson’s connection to her craft has always been direct from heart to hand. Throughout her creative life in all incarnations: producing fine art, designing textiles, painting sets deep inside the world of Hollywood’s dream machine, and now creating her eponymous line of jewelry. 

Growing up in Hollywood as the scion of famed Oscar winning producer Arnold Kopelson (“Platoon,” “The Fugitive” and “Seven”), Stephanie was exposed to the glamour, creativity and worldliness of the entertainment business and the art world from a young age.  Thus began her journey into myriad and varied visual mediums. 

Her jewelry pieces are made with sterling silver and gold-filled chain plus a wide variety of semi-precious stones and freshwater pearls as well as crystal, porcelain, and glass beads. " I’m inspired by the shapes of the stones, their colors and textures, and I love how they mingle and reflect light.  I rarely have a preconceived idea of what I’m going to make. I’ll choose my pallet of stones, and other materials and start constructing.  Sometimes I mix different types of chain together in a single piece.  I take it apart, put it back together, all the while adding and subtracting until it speaks to me. It’s about surrender, letting go, and trusting the process.  And every time I’ve made a piece – in various forms of art and now jewelry - I discover something new.” 

Kopelson incorporates lucky elephant charms into various pieces that pay homage to her late father Arnold, a larger-than-life personality and lover of elephants. 

The jewelry itself is multi-layered symbolically as well as literally, with influences from Art Deco and the 1920’s, Coco Chanel and her swingy lengthy strands piled upon each other for movement and adornment, breaking free from conventions, from that other feminist and free flowing decade, the 1970’s. In both those cliché-free, utterly unique decades, women found themselves on the verge: reevaluating one’s identity and recreating an idea of womanhood which also wind up manifesting in what women wore, and how they wore it. 

Stephanie Kopelson’s jewelry isn’t just an act of self-expression: the pieces are to be layered, stacked, draped and strewn, as both front and center as a wakeup call to a background of subtle daytime clothes – or as fanciful pastiche at night.  Or each worn separately, all depending on mood, occasion and attitude.  Like those well-loved pieces in your wardrobe, Stephanie's pieces can sit back and convey comfort – or they can stand out and speak loud. "A mode for every mood," she says.  Whichever way you choose to wear them, the wearer becomes a creator themselves – allowing them to be artful and creative – like Kopelson herself. 

All Stephanie Kopelson Studio jewelry is Handmade & One of a Kind.

Written by Merle Ginsberg

Ginsberg is the Style Editor of Los Angeles Magazine, and has written on style for The Hollywood Reporter, Harper’s Bazaar, W Magazine, WWD, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Rolling Stone.