“Gosh this is just exquisite — 18-karat gold of a hand-finished, brushed-metal casting with recycled silver, and look at the detail! Very demure, very regal. You put this on and bam, all of a sudden you’re transformed — you’re anyone, you’re anywhere. You’re a duchess, you’re a queen. You can see the number on the screen there, 0303393460; and you know what to do. Talk to me and let’s have some fun!”
That was the opening of jewellery brand Completedworks’s Autumn/Winter 2025 show. It took place on the set of a live-shopping channel, where American actress and icon Debi Mazar played the host, Julia. Julia drifts between her exaggerated advertisements and a progressively maddened internal monologue: she needs to piss, she’s fantasising about the bronze, muscled arms of an imaginary man, Henri, and making out with a ceramic face, smearing it with red lipstick (the makeup was by Isamaya Ffrench). She’s even contemplating murdering her husband, Steven. “Smile, idiot, smile. Stop spiralling. You’re always spiralling. Picture a happy place, like Dr Bergen said,” said Mazar’s character.
Mazar showed off Completedworks’s latest collection, which featured the brand’s signature sculptural pieces made primarily from recycled materials, alongside necklaces of oversized pearls woven between smaller beads, red beaded necklaces and shimmering dangly earrings.
The show injected some energy into a relatively quiet London Fashion Week — and after Completedworks’s past two performances, it was a fixture a number of showgoers were looking forward to. The show space in London’s Senate House was packed with editors and industry insiders laughing along to the humorous script, which was written by award-winning playwright Laura Waldren. The set was created by interior designer Hollie Bowden.
The performance toyed with the psychology of consumerism — Mazar’s character persistently pokes fun at the blabbering callers and at her job as host. The performance also brought into question the way fashion week plays into consumerism. “On a shopping channel, they’re often selling products that promise transformation. They thrive on layering value onto objects, whether it’s through an exaggerated description or add-on offers. There’s always a sense of urgency that makes the product feel like a must-have — which is something that pervades the whole fashion world, so it’s been fun to play with that,” says Anna Jewsbury, who founded the brand in 2013, ahead of the London Fashion Week performance.
The collection mirrors the performance’s themes of excess and exaggeration. “Jewellery has always been considered an added embellishment, but with this collection, we’re playing with the idea that each piece is an embellishment of an embellishment,” says Jewsbury. The pieces feature pearls used as a base to be accessorised with stones and crumpled bracelets adorned with crumpled charms.
Why show at LFW?
Completedworks is no stranger to a unique show concept. Its AW24 show starred Joanna Lumley, who performed a monologue (dreamt up by novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza) that drifts between her mundane life with her alter-ego Lilith’s extraordinary one. The stage was scattered with magazines and burnt pieces of toast. For SS25, Glee star Dianna Agron and British model and activist Lily Cole performed a 20-minute-long, three-part play about an art historian and a biographer, Aliza (played by Agron), who is working on a book about French sculptor Camille Claudel (played by Cole). The play, written by Mirza again, explored the challenges female artists have faced across periods of history, and how they find freedom.
“We went into the shows not expecting anything to come of it, and we’ve been really overwhelmed by the response — particularly with the Joanna Lumley one when it was so new and different to what everyone else was doing,” says Jewsbury. “It’s been nice to see how much people connect with the work.”
Why is a jewellery and accessories brand showing at fashion week in the first place? “It’s a good question,” Jewsbury laughs. “What I love about showing during fashion week is you get this energy from a live format. It’s exciting to me and it really enables us to give our pieces a bit more life and context. It allows us to add to the Completedworks universe in an unexpected way. Fashion week also allows us to contribute to the cultural discourse.” She measures the success of her fashion week shows by gauging “if people are excited by the show and talking about it and engaging with it”.
Jewellery makes up around 70 per cent of the brand’s sales, while homeware (which includes glass, metal and ceramic pieces) accounts for 25 per cent, and bags, which just launched, comprises 5 per cent. The brand declined to share annual revenue figures. “By the small nature of the products, there’s an inherent limit to how close the audience can get to the pieces,” says Jewsbury. “What’s been good about the shopping channel concept is that we have these monitors on set that zoom in on the products. We can do re-sees with buyers and press to take them through the collection, but [the show] is really about creating a moment and expanding on the Completedworks world.”
The shows play a role in customer acquisition, too, she says. “These days, shows are all over Instagram, fashion shows aren’t gatekept by the industry [anymore]. Our direct-to-consumer contingent has definitely grown over the past few years,” says Jewsbury. Wholesale still makes up the majority of sales (60 per cent) and the brand has around 100 stockists worldwide including Dover Street Market, Net-a-Porter, Ssense, Bergdorf Goodman and 10 Corso Como Seoul. Its key markets are the UK, the US, Asia-Pacific (particularly Japan, South Korea and Australia), France, Germany and the UAE.
Part of what draws customers to Completedworks is that it feels contextualised within wider cultural conversations — politics, history, art. Jewsbury, who studied maths and philosophy at the University of Oxford, says that her collections are influenced by what she reads and sees around her. “I love that the collection can be in dialogue with the world. You have to bring your customers and community into your world, because at the end of the day there are a lot of brands out there so there has to be a reason why you’re doing your brand,” she says. The luxury slowdown has made it clear that customers are increasingly looking for connection, creativity and storytelling.
Putting on a performance
For Jewsbury, coming up with a unique show concept comes down to understanding different cultural references and having a solid group of collaborators to bounce ideas off. “It’s a collaborative process, but we definitely gave Laura [the script writer] a lot of free rein to go away with it, which is always the best way — and we were in good hands with Laura, she’s really talented,” says Jewsbury. “Sometimes it’s hard to let go, but when you do, you get the best outcome.”
The brand tends to plan its shows six months in advance — or as soon as the last one is over — but time restraints remain the biggest barrier. “You can’t start casting too early, lots of things have to fall into place first and often the talents won’t know what their schedule will be. Usually, they don’t have much time to learn many lines and there’s not much time for a rehearsal either, but we tend to find ways around that. Then you’re also having to persuade people to come on board without the big budget a bigger brand might have,” Jewsbury adds. “It’s all challenging — I’m also trying to organise my son’s seventh birthday party right now and maybe that’s even harder,” she jokes. “But it always comes together in the end with lots of brilliant people involved.”
Jewsbury says she’s hugely benefitted from the support of the British Fashion Council. “Whether it’s just sending emails and questions or financial support through the Fashion Trust [a philanthropic project that offers funding and mentorship] — you get a lot of support,” she says.
So what’s next for the brand? Jewsbury teases another product category launching in April. “We’re trying to think about how we can refine and elevate what we’re doing and really hone in on having a distinct point of view,” she says. “Like any small, independent brand, we’re just trying to exercise a bit of patience in our ambition and expectations, but at the same time we’re definitely trying to broaden our customer base and community and build on the universe we’re creating through the shows.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
Who is the next Jonathan Anderson?
