There's something about Montauk in September. The summer crowds begin to disappear, the beaches grow quieter, and the landscape seems to take on an entirely different rhythm. It's my favorite time to be there.
Every September, Todd and I return to Montauk for our anniversary. It's become a tradition of ours, spending time by the ocean, watching him surf, walking the beaches, and enjoying the particular kind of quiet that comes with the end of summer.
We always wake up for sunrise. Those early mornings are some of my favorite moments. The sky turns beautiful shades of peach and pink, the ocean shifts between soft blues and deeper greens, and the grasses along the dunes catch the first light of the day.
It's a color palette I never seem to tire of. And eventually, I found myself wanting to translate it into jewelry.
A Landscape in Gemstones
The earrings, originally called Prism, began with color rather than a particular gemstone or design.
I wanted to capture the shades I associate with Montauk: the peachy pinks of sunrise, the greens of the dunes, the many blues of the Atlantic and the crashing white of the waves.
Rather than selecting one type of gemstone, I searched for stones that could represent those colors most beautifully.
The result is a combination of sapphires, tourmalines, and diamonds, each selected for its particular shade, shape, and relationship to the stones surrounding it.
Some colors are unexpected beside one another, but that's what I love about them. Nature rarely arranges itself into a perfectly coordinated palette, yet somehow everything belongs.
The Beauty of Almost Symmetry
I've always been drawn to designs that feel balanced without being identical. These earrings are intentionally asymmetrical. The gemstones vary in shape, size, and placement, but both earrings arrive at the same ending point, creating a sense of harmony between them.
There's something interesting about a design that encourages your eye to wander.
Rather than focusing on one central element, your eye moves from stone to stone, discovering different colors, proportions, and little details along the way.
To me, that's what makes them feel alive.
Each gemstone also required its own individually developed setting, carefully measured and made to accommodate its unique proportions.
It was a thoughtful, time-intensive process, from finding the right combination of stones to working out how each would sit beside the next. Nothing about the arrangement was accidental, even though I wanted the finished earrings to feel wonderfully effortless.
The Beginning of Something
I've wanted to explore this style of earring for quite some time.
There's an artistic freedom in working with different gemstone shapes and colors, allowing the design to develop organically rather than following a traditional, matching arrangement.
But creating something this individual takes time. Finding stones that complement one another in color, scale, and shape is a process of collecting, editing, rearranging, and sometimes beginning again.
It's part of what makes these earrings so special to me.
While this first pair is an especially intricate expression of the idea, I've been thinking about exploring smaller interpretations, different gemstone combinations, and new palettes inspired by places, memories, and moments.
I love the idea of developing an entire collection around this approach to design. For now, these earrings are where that story begins.
A little bit of September, a little bit of Montauk, and a collection of colors that remind me of a place I love.
With love,
Lauren
Founder & Designer, KING + CURATED