DETROIT – Meet Karissma Yve - a young woman, business owner and fashion designer who grew up in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood.
From an early age, she sought the the alchemical secrets of precious metal manufacturing and began to teach herself the art of transmutation and ancient jewelry techniques. She started her own business - XENOPHORA.
Watch Uniquely Detroit's feature story on Karissma Yve in the video player above.
She studies the aesthetics of texture, decay, desaturation and romantic escapes of color and finds beauty within the impermanent and imperfection within each and of piece of jewelry created.
She's presented XENOPHORA's objects during Paris Fashion Week consecutively and the jewels have adorned the spaces within many high-end concept stores, retailers and galleries around the world including the US, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and beyond.
In December of 2016, she was awarded, $10,000 in grant funding from the New Economy Initiative/NEIdeas to purchase equipment to sustainably manufacture all XENOPHORA jewelry in-house.
Shortly after in January of 2017, she was then presented a $35,000 grant award by the then Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden and the Mayor of Detroit, Mike Duggan on behalf of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation to further the support of XENOPHORA and her latest venture, Detroit’s only, artisanal jewelry manufacturing facility and experiential design-house, Gildform.
This full-service/boutique jewelry manufacturing facility specializes in bringing their private label clients on a global scale jewelry ideas from concept to creation; offering a range of services from 3D Printing, Lost-wax Casting, Finishing, Computer Aided Design, Brand Consultations and more.
"Life is peculiar in how it is so terrifying and amazing yet bursting with aesthetics. Life is like wandering on the edge of the universe but it's special because if you're lucky, if you work hard enough, life can be like wandering on the edge of the universe that you've created for yourself and for your tribe," Yve says on her website.