Black and Sigi: The sisters behind the brand

The Sisters Behind The Brand 

Black and Sigi was created in 2015 when our interest in creating wire wrapped jewellery went from a creative passion to a small business, and this was only possible from all you BAS Humans – friends and family who kicked it all off by supporting us. We are both creative people and have an interest in style and fashion, but not only this, we enjoyed the idea of working together designing and creating products from start to finish and making a living from it.

Clio is the eldest by 6 years, and Athena is the youngest and hence why we call her Teeny! She also used to love really small things when she was younger like Polly pocket and Silvagnian Family so her nickname stuck from a very early age! We both work around family and other work commitments and have created BAS slowly and organically to what it is today, Clio even was back working the day after she gave birth so that she could get that order out to you! Ha.

The name Black and Sigi is the amalgamation of our mothers maiden name and our fathers nick name taken from our surname Sigismondi. The story begins there really…… we are the daughters of the entities that make up the name, and its this story that sits at the heart of the business. We are very much influenced by our Italian roots, our family and people around us and hope to create products and collections that reflect all of this.

 

 

We sit down with our PR and Comms Associate and spill the beans on how BAS was really started, what inspires us and where we think the business will be like in 10 years time!

1 / How did you start making jewellery?

We started making jewellery and creating our own pieces way back before Black and Sigi was ever born. Athena initially discovered the art of wire wrapped jewellery at 17, by accident really. A side project she had made from leftovers of another art project, and she made one of the rings that we love the most! We plan on re- launching very soon!

There was no jewellery school, it was a self taught art that we perfected over years of practice, research and designing. I (Clio) saw the vision of the business right from the start, I saw that what Athena had started was an incredibly beautiful technique to explore and share to people, so having studied management at University, and both of us on career breaks we set out to create the business that we have today.

2 / What’s your favourite part of developing your brand?

There are so many aspects of the development that we enjoy, but our most favourite part is the creative thinking process. Its actually the most exhausting, but its the most satisfying to see unfold. An idea can be sparked from absolutely anything and it’s just exciting to make that idea into a fully fledged product/ campaign/collection or whatever path our crazy idea takes us down. The problem is that we are always looking to designing the next new thing. We get itchy once a project has been created and we want to start the next! The life of a designer!

3/ What’s your favourite piece to make ?

We don’t have a favourite to make, but we have certain designs that are very fiddly and therefore they can get frustrating ! We still love them though!

4/ What is it like working with your sister?

Ha Read all about why working with your sister makes for the best DREAM TEAM here .

5/ What inspires your campaigns and designs?

So many different things inspires us! Take the collaboration with bakers Wilma’s for our Secret Valentines Campaign. This idea was inspired by Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory story. We took the concept of the golden ticket and created a sweet collaboration where the brownie stick was the BAS golden ticket to winning something BAS with every Wilmas sweet treat purchase.

Our Immortal Collection is inspired by Mythological characters and is a nod to our late father who also enjoyed this and even named us after Greek mythological characters. We take the character, research the story and their history and create a design around this. Take the Artemis – The Greek Goddess of the Hunt. We took her arrow and created a design around this to represent her.

Our Feel Good Necklaces were inspired by the array of feelings we were and are all going through in current lockdown.

 

Clio & Athena x