Qike Qilo: Expressing Luxurious Quality Through the Fluidity of Nature

The London-based jewellery brand Qike Qilo, which launched its first collection “Aqua Wave” this September, embodies a unique blend of both Chinese fashion editorial influence and the contemporary Eastern perspective of the digital age.

Founder and Chief Designer Lei Qin had a five-year career as a fashion editor for the Chinese edition of Harper’s Bazaar before settling in the UK. Unlike jewellery designers with a purely design-focused background, her experience in the fashion media industry has been seamlessly applied to the brand’s development. Through the Aqua Wave collection, we can sense the ripple of discussions around sustainable fashion, as well as her sharp styling sensibility and the “East meets West” cross-cultural interaction. The collection, consisting of a bracelet, ring, earrings, and necklace, captures the essence of “frozen moments of waves,” all crafted from eco-friendly materials such as 18k recycled gold and non-toxic green enamel highlighting the fluid beauty of water from various perspectives.

Whether it is the imagery, materials, or the final form, Aqua Wave suggests that this young, editorial brand does not indulge in the typical complex storytelling approach – a common strategy among contemporary fashion and accessory brands. This approach is often aimed at creating a more commercialized, versatile lineup, giving female consumers more options and aligning with the era’s emphasis on diversity. Aqua Wave goes against this trend, offering an undeniably simple selection of elements and imagery. Designer Lei Qin boldly takes a minimalist approach with this complete collection, exuding confidence. Her obsession with water in Aqua Wave evokes comparisons to Eastern and Western painters in art history who fixated on simple subjects, using obsessive “repetition” over time to deepen their personal mark, allowing future generations to appreciate the extraordinary qualities of often overlooked, mundane things.

Thanks to the water-inspired green enamel, Aqua Wave presents a traditionally youthful East Asian visage—elegant, refined, and almost as if transforming hard stone into a delicate short poem by Taiwanese writer Jian Jian. (Jian Jian has a famous essay collection titled Water Questions, which also uses water as a medium, reflecting on longing, nostalgia, and the female perspective on life.) The pieces take on a certain ethereal quality, transcending the solidity of the material. The ecofriendly 18k gold, combined with the green enamel’s Chinese aesthetic, elevates the piece’s versatility and daily wearability, allowing it to seamlessly integrate into modern fashion capitals like London, New York, and Milan. This undoubtedly extends the brand’s reach and life cycle significantly.

Especially during the London Fashion Week runway show in September, models wore black strapless gowns with green intervals, showcasing the brand’s debut collection. The jewellery and the dress’s colours were harmoniously aligned, embodying a pure and unadulterated natural beauty. The metallic sheen of golden threads shimmered between the velvet black fabric and the translucent, cicada-wing-like fluorescent green organza, evoking the serene imagery of summer tree branches with cicadas buzzing and water gently flowing beneath them. Overall, Qike Qilo’s debut collection firmly established the brand and its values: to make jewellery and adornments that speak for themselves, becoming a tool for the wearer’s emotional and self-expressive empowerment.

Starting from Lei Qin’s original intention, Qike Qilo aims to fill the gap between fashionable jewellery and expensive fine jewellery. The fluidity of water serves as a bridge between youth, selfexpression, and luxury in the context of jewellery. As a new generation brand from a Chinese designer based in London, Qike Qilo embraces a youthful approach while distinguishing itself from the intricate aesthetics and fine craftsmanship centered on nature, as seen in the century-old Western jewellery brands like Cartier, Tiffany, and Buccellati.

In addition to Qike Qilo’s emphasis on sustainable materials, its greatest characteristics can be summarised as dynamism and emotionality—traits that first appeared in jewellery design in the1960s through German space scientist and jewellery designer Friedrich Becker. Compared to the industrial laboratory and German precision, Eastern poetic abstraction offers a richer soil for luxury. When thinking of Eastern designers known for their ability to express the flexibility of jewellery, it’s hard not to think of Qeelin, with its iconic pair of goldfish “Qin Qin” and the shocking, dissectable panda robot. Qike Qilo, as a new generation brand making its debut at the major international fashion weeks, has only just begun to reveal itself, yet it seems to have found its point of strength in the intersection of Eastern jewellery, technology, and traditional craftsmanship.

In contrast to Buccellati’s 2015 “Timeless Blue”—a tribute to Monet’s stormy seaside impressionist painting featuring intricate diamonds and the brand’s signature lace-like filigree work with “splashing waves” embossed on the metal—Aqua Wave embraces simplicity, infused with subtlety and Daoist philosophy. It uses the rotation of the jewellery itself to form asymmetric waves, where each “water wave” captures a unique moment of nature’s rhythm. More precisely, the water waves are never the same; different angles of sunlight and the positions where the waves occur create distinct shapes

The Cascade Earrings capture the vertical elegance of a waterfall, the Tide Necklace symbolizes the tidal energy in a ring-like formation, while the Ripple Bracelet and Wave Ring each observe the ripples of a lake from varying scales. Moreover, the kinetic energy of “water waves” is not superficial in design, but rather conveys a latent force, subtly felt beneath the quiet surface, ready to surge. Based on the overall styling of the models, the jewellery’s tension extends beyond its seemingly modest and minimalist outlines.

Although this series tirelessly speaks of water, it is not entirely about water. The hollow shapes formed by the intertwining lines of metal and water-green enamel resemble a pair of classical willow-branch eyes. This may indirectly reflect Qike Qilo’s attempt to convey not only a timeless view of nature and the cyclical nature of life, but also its incorporation of surrealistic elements, leaving space for open interpretation and personal styling. This approach allows the jewellery to blossom with multiple layers of life, offering users a more diverse and individualistic experience.