On the thrill and peril of going viral

Kerin Rose Gold is a contemporary crystal art vanguard, redefining the craft through her pioneering work in fashion and beyond. Her studio, a-morir, has been at the forefront of embellished avant-garde eyewear, accessories, and objets d’art since its inception in 2008. Gold’s work has been celebrated globally and embraced by leading pop and sports icons. Her a-morir collections have been a disruptive force in luxury eyewear, and her work as a crystal artist has changed the perception of how the medium is viewed. Gold’s works are distinguished by their audacious designs and flawless craftsmanship.

You started a-morir almost two decades ago—which is when we first met.

I had just started selling at Patricia Field. I was experimenting, doing weird fringe necklaces and feathered headbands, and the eyewear, obviously, is what stuck. But you emailed me from your AOL address because you were writing for AOL Style.

R.I.P.

And I was like, “Oh my god! Somebody found my stuff and wrote about it!” It was one of my first ever pieces of press. I’m so grateful we’ve been friends ever since.

I forgot you were doing all those other creative experiments when you started. Obviously you were carving a unique path, but did you have a sense then of how much of a trail you would have to blaze?

I still kind of don’t believe that this is what my career has turned into. I’m fucking flabbergasted. I never thought about it because it’s never something I would have conceptualized.

Bedazzling is very physical, meticulous, laborious work, and you live with a chronic illness. How do you take care of your body so you can be creatively productive?

The reason my career started in the first place was because I found a drug therapy that finally put me into remission. I was violently, actively ill for 10 years with ulcerative colitis. Once I went into remission, I had a post-traumatic stress breakdown. I got fired from a job because I literally couldn’t function at work. I was just like, “Don’t cry at work today. It’s the only goal.” I’m fortunate that, aside from two very specific instances, for most of my career, the reason I’ve been able to do this is because I’ve been in remission.

My illness started in 2008. And the thing about having a chronic illness is—and I’m speaking only for me—If you have the flu, or if you have a stomach bug, or if you have a fever, you’re assed out on the couch for a few days. If your whole life is that, you can’t. I couldn’t be assed out on the couch for a decade. That wasn’t going to work for me. So I graduated from NYU with honors. I had two part-time jobs and an internship, all while I was really teetering—I’m not being hyperbolic—on the verge of death.

In 2011, I found out that my colon was precancerous, and because of my condition, it was in my best interest to remove it. I found out a month after finding out that I was one of Vogue Italia’s 10 new talents for the year and was going to be showcased in Milan during fashion week. I scheduled my colon removal surgery around that and went to Milan with a colostomy bag and all of my supplies. I had never been to Italy before. I had not really traveled much on my own before, but I was like “What am I gonna do? Not go?”

I sent you that Lena Dunham quote from Famesick the other day: “…in terms of sheer grit and hardheadedness, no one is more employable than a determined sick girl.” Are there ways that you think your illness has actually—this might sound nuts—contributed to your success? Do you have an ability to push through discomfort that maybe other people just haven’t practiced?

I’m sure there is some truth to that. I didn’t get sick until I was 16, but I’ve kind of always been this person. I was a competitive runner when I was 6, 7, 8, years old, winning in my category in different races around Long Island. I’ve always been as rebellious as I am and as much of an overachiever as I am. But there’s a huge part of me—and this is probably illness related—[that wants] to live as big a life as possible. I want to have as many experiences, and say yes to as many things, and do as much as I can. Because there is a huge part of me that feels like a decade of my life was stolen, because from 16 to 25, I did not have a quality of life. So I’m always trying to make up for that. It’s impossible to go through something that traumatic for that long, and then have these sort of aftershocks later in life, and not have it fuck you up, not have it affect you positively, negatively.

I do see how knowing that your life can be upended at any moment gives you that sense of urgency.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that for a solid 15 years, I was living my life on behalf of my illness, and then for another 15 years, I was living my life on behalf of my business. So now I’m in this phase where I’m like, “Okay, what do I want to do?” That’s a reason why I really leaned into my fine art practice. I was like, “I’ve been doing all these things for clients, for customers, for brands. What am I doing for myself?” So that’s been a really rewarding journey.

Naomi Osaka wore your bedazzled Labubus at the US Open, which are now trademarked Lablingblings, last year. They became a sensation. But you wrote a really honest essay for The Cut about what going viral actually means when you’re a small business owner—it impacted your health.

I developed a fistula during Lablingbling mania. I had my first surgery in March and my second surgery in June. People were like, “Oh, are you just staying at home?” No, I’ve got fucking work to do. I’ve got a life to live. I mean, I was doing that all at like 60 to 70 percent capacity, and I was very uncomfortable and in a lot of pain. From the middle of March until the end of April, I could not sit down. I have a standing desk at the studio so I would take a walk in the morning, go to work, stand all day, stand while eating dinner. I was standing for 10, 11, 12 hours a day, and then it wasn’t even comfortable for me to lie on the couch. I would just have to stack a bunch of pillows and go to bed, so I’d stand all day and then go to bed. But sometimes you just gotta fucking do it.

How are you doing now?

I’m really fortunate that I’m doing pretty great. My body did me a fucking solid and kind of pushed the medical device that was in out on its own, which saved me probably two minor surgeries. I still have proactive recovery things that I’m going to be doing—various physical therapies and stuff. And this year has been so much slower than previous years. I think part of that is the political and socioeconomical zeitgeist. Whether it’s people shopping or brands doing activations, a lot of them have really scaled back. If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s always a part of you that thinks, ‘Well, this could be my last sale ever.’ But having a slow year finally gave me time to do all of these things that I was trying to do last year but couldn’t. Instead of doing that stereotypical thing where if things are slow I just kind of panic and stare into the abyss, I was like, “No, you have stuff you want to do, and you’re going to do it.”

You have dedicated a lot more attention to your fine art practice in recent years. I’m wondering if it felt more like a natural evolution or a pivot.

It felt almost like coming home. In the same way that I’ve been an athlete my whole life, I’ve been an artist my whole life. I was taking painting and sculpting classes when I was in elementary school. I was in all of the AP studio arts in high school. I took painting in college. Even though I was really proud of it, and I still am proud of it, I knew that there wasn’t anything outstanding about my painting.

Realizing that crystals were my medium—like I was an acrylic painter, but this is my paint—and that I was really passionate about pushing this craft forward and showing that it can be fine art, that really lit a fire under me. And that made me understand what my role could be in the fine art world.

Yes, I refer to myself as a crystal artist. I use crystals, the finest quality you can. Crystals are a proprietary blend of glass mixed with sand. Rhinestones can be a bunch of different things, and rhinestones are way less expensive. Crystals are so expensive, but they’re better. It’s also like most crafts—it’s not respected because it’s done mainly by women and or minorities. There are a few white dudes who bedazzle, and I think they are more respected than I am because they’re dudes. And even though some of their stuff is really beautiful, some of their stuff is corny as hell.

The aspirational analogues that I have would be the bead artist Liza Lou, or the mixed media gem artist Kathleen Ryan. Liza Lou does these incredible life-size installations of full scenes done entirely out of seed beads. She did one called Kitchen that’s a full-scale kitchen, and when I say everything is seed beads, I mean the water coming out of the faucet, the cereal box, the milk in the cereal bowl, the cereal. It’s eye-wateringly breathtaking. And Kathleen Ryan does the oversized sculptures of rotting fruit with semi-precious gems, stones and beads. Those are two brilliant, successful artists who have taken craft and elevated it to high art, and they do it in a very unique way to them. In that way, I’m inspired. But I’m not trying to do what they do. I’m trying to do my version of what they do: changing the perception of what a medium can be with storytelling and purpose.

I’ve been reading interviews with Dries Van Noten about his new foundation, and it’s really centered on the intersection of fine art craftsmanship. Do you feel like in this moment of hyper technology and AI there will be a return to appreciating the handiwork and care that goes into craft?

I think you’re seeing it with the boon in cyberdecks. I feel like women and the queer community have really led that. And of course, the critique that cyberdecks are getting is that they’re too pretty and embellished. And it’s like, yeah—because if a dude did it, it would look like a fucking CyberTruck. You’re seeing it in the tech world already, in the same way you’re seeing an appreciation of trade industries. The Cut just ran an article about women being plumbers and welders. I think you’re seeing a surge of interest in that. People are understanding what it takes to work with your hands. I do have an uphill battle. Pretty is associated sociologically both with femininity and the superficial. Bedazzling is pretty. I don’t know if anyone is going to make it a respected craft. I’m hoping that I’m successful at that, but I know that it is an uphill battle.

Your latest eyewear collections straddle that fashion and fine art line more than ever. Like the CHIBI—they’re styled after anime eyes, very pop art. And the Handle With Care line is more sculptural, really tactile. Do you feel like both lanes are influencing each other more and more?

For sure, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m redoing my website. I realize there is a disconnect between the work I do and the story I’m trying to tell and the mission that I’m trying to accomplish. What I want to show, what I’m hoping that people understand, is that a craft can be high art, and fashion can be high art. Like the Schiaparelli organza-spiked heels. How is that not art? I literally have Nicholas Kirkwood for Rodarte shoes that I have seen in museums. Are they putting it in a museum because it’s not art? Like, these are insanely crafted and designed.

A lot of the work that comes through the studio is celebrity customization or brand work, and I love all of it, and I’m so grateful for it. But that work has financially freed me to be a lot more experimental with the work I’m going to do for eyewear and my own brand. I also think the LaBlingBling bag charms really unlocked something for me, too, because it was really proof of concept that people like the work and they understand the work, but sometimes they need a context for it. And a bag charm is a perfect context. I’m starting to push the boundaries. I have tampon bag charms that are coming out. I don’t know if they’re blunts or spliffs because I don’t smoke, but I have blunt bag charms. So that’s been a really fun avenue to play around in.

Speaking of tech versus art, the new eyewear is designed not to work with facial recognition technology. Was that intentional?

I don’t want to say it was an afterthought. That would be incorrect. I have a punk sort of anti-authority streak, but when I design, I’m never thinking about the end product. I’m thinking about the process. It’s like when a chef opens up their fridge and is like, what can I make with these ingredients? And once they figure out what they’re making, they can get literally and figuratively zesty with it.

That is sort of what happened with these. As the designs were becoming more concrete, I was like, “Let me test something—oh shit!” I mean, whatever. I live in New York City; my shit’s being tracked. I’ve been to Madison Square Garden. James Dolan has an imprint of my face. Fine.

Once I realized where it was going, I wound up taking inspiration from dazzle camouflage, which was used in World War I. Ships were painted in black-and-white shapes that meet at different angles. There’s no real design to it, but when you see it, you’re like oh there is a design to it! At the time, it scrambled that technology, and so I’ve always been a fan of dazzle camouflage. One, because it’s called fucking dazzle camouflage. Two, because it was something that makeup artists started experimenting with to thwart facial recognition technology, like by painting awkward black-and-white geometric shapes on your face, and then putting your hair in front of your face in a very specific way. I would like to explore it more, not necessarily because I think it’s a new frontier, but because it’s exciting. And most other things involving technology, or combating technology, are kind of ugly and bland. If you can do it and also be fucking sparkly? Like, let’s go.