AEA's 3D-Printed Jewelry: 'Little Monuments' You Can Wear

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Welcome to Open Studio, a Racked feature where we explore the workspaces and showrooms of some of the city's most talented, up-and-coming designers.

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• "The first store that carried my stuff was Old Hollywood, actually. It was pretty funny how [they] found me—my brother lives in DC and the owner of Old Hollywood was at something weird—like, T.G.I. Friday’s—and she and her boyfriend needed directions, so
• Dyad earrings, $710
• Dagger necklace, $390
• “The main line I’d say—well, I wouldn’t say I have a traditional customer, because the designs are still very avant-garde, but a little bit more serious. It’s more dressy, more sophisticated. And people buy AEA One because it’s fun, it’s sporty. It’s ligh
• “The reason I gravitated to jewelry was the timelessness of it and the ability of things to be passed down.“
• "The ones with the stones and the enamel take about six to eight weeks, just because there’s a lot of labor—the casting, cleaning the enamel, cutting the stones, polishing them...there’s like, nine steps! If it’s just a plain metal one, it could be like,
• Track bangles, $128
• “One thing that’s really unique about my brand is that all the stones are custom cut. That’s why I get all these amazing shapes: Everything is cut to my design. Most jewelers work the opposite way—they buy stones and then design the piece around them. I d
• Dagger earrings, $1,380
• "My first piece was the Falcon ring. I didn’t have the intention of starting my own brand when I was doing this stuff, I just wanted to do something that I really believed in."
  
  Falcon ring,
• Silver crown ring; $750; Gold crown ring, $1,900
• "The main line’s pieces were so futuristic and forward, and I wanted to explore that with the material and the production process. 3D printing, to me, is awesome. It was a new production technique that everyone was kind of moving towards, and it was so su
• "I 3D print the masters. We draw them in CAD and print them out. I’ve been paying attention to what’s happening in 3D printing and I was like, 'There’s got to be a way to print a wearable material.' I had a friend that worked at Shapeways and he and I had
• Crosscut ring, $1,750
• “I’ve been getting into engagement rings lately. I’m working with some private customers and putting some more delicate, classic pieces in the line. A lot of my other pieces people buy as engagement rings. I’m going to start doing that in the next year or
• Track bangle, $128
• “I’m always influenced by the idea of movement or form...The same way an architect thinks about a home, I think about a ring—the way its going to sit on your hand, the movement of the eye. I design it as a whole. I think in shapes—maybe that’s a better wa

Photos: Driely S. for Racked

For someone who began her career designing sweaters for ultra-traditional Ralph Lauren, Adrienne Alaimo makes awfully futuristic jewelry. The AEA designer has mastered the art of 3D printing, and she uses it to turn out chunky, architectural pieces studded with colorful gems—nothing like the droves of delicate, barely-there stacking rings and studs lining the shelves of most Brooklyn boutiques.

"Although my pieces are very unique, they're not trendy. They have their own identity," Alaimo says of her main label, and its nylon plastic diffusion line, AEA One. "Everybody wants me to reference a specific architect, but I'm my own architect. I'm designing these little monuments in my mind."

We recently stopped by the designer's Williamsburg waterfront studio to check out the high-tech printing process up close and her upcoming line of engagement rings.

· AEA Jewelry [Official Site]
· Open Studio [Racked NY]