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Loree Rodkin photo

Loree Rodkin white gold and diamond bondage ring, $23,000 U.S.

Loree Rodkin

Madonna's favourite jeweller on the beauty of imperfect stones

Daggers, claws, skulls and other symbols of the dark side aren’t the usual fine jewellery fare. But then Loree Rodkin isn’t your typical jeweller.

With her witchy hair, black layers and motorcycle boots, Rodkin has a sensibility that teeters on fashion’s furthest edge – a far cry from the flowers and pretty pastels so prevalent in jewellery design.

Even Rodkin’s diamonds - in milky yellow and brown roughs - have a subversive quality.

“I like irreverence, and using materials in an irreverent way,” Rodkin described on a recent visit to Hazel, the Toronto boutique that carries her designs.

The Los Angeles-based designer was in town for the celebrity-packed Toronto International Film Festival, a perfect venue seeing as Rodkin counts Elton John, Cher, Mary J. Blige, Aerosmith and Madonna as fans.

“Madonna was asked on the radio what she wanted for her 50th birthday and she said she only wanted Loree Rodkin jewellery,” Rodkin beams.

Choices could range from a lava and diamond pendant that looks like a glob of speckled caramel to a prehistoric barnacle called a trilobite set in a diamond frame.

Presumably, Madonna already owns one of Rodkin’s articulating bondage rings that spans the entire finger. Daphne Guinness wears them in multiples.

“I like impurity and stones with flaws,” Rodkin notes, as she draws attention to the bondage ring set with unpolished diamonds on her finger. “And eccentric stones that look like artifacts.”

And while she does do “shiny, pretty things,” translucent roughs and dusty, mushroom colours are more to her taste.

The use of smokey diamond roughs is a current trend, but Rodkin was way ahead of the curve. “I started in 1989 with a diamond skull when there was no edgy rock and roll jewellery,” she says. And ahead of the pack is where she remains.