IN SEARCH OF PERFECTION
Michelle Ong creates jewellery that is both serious
and feminine, with an ever-growing fan base of
high achievers around the world, as LUX discovers. Caroline Davies
On first sight, Michelle Ong bears more than a
passing resemblance to her jewellery collection: she
is delicate and pristine. She has just flown into
London, and spent the previous evening hosting a
concert with Lang Lang as part of her new
foundation. Today, she is promoting the opening of
her first retrospective exhibition, “Carnet: the
exquisite jewellery of Michelle Ong.” I find her in
the high ceilinged front room of Asia House. As
press, technicians and curators swirl around, Ong
sits upright in a wooden chair, her hands carefully
folded, skin beautifully smooth, her eyes staring
forward, unreadable.
Ong started Carnet, her jewellery range, when she found she had nothing to wear. Born and raised in Hong Kong, the daughter of two doctors, Ong worked in America for a jewellery company. Although she lacked any formal training, Ong began to design pieces according to her tastes. “I am my own muse,” she says. “It is a bit selfindulgent. I visualise a woman like me and what they would like to wear. I do my own thing. I am very true to my own creation.”
Since their founding in 1985 by Ong and partner Avi Nagar, Carnet pieces have decorated the necks of Kate Winslet and Glen Close among other admired screen sirens. Ong designed the keys used in the Spielberg epic, “The Da Vinci Code.” Her recent retrospective exhibition, looking back at the past 20 years of Ong’s creations, was a small but beautifully formed collection of this skill. The Countess, the first piece to greet you as you entered, set the standard. A high-necked choker in brown and briolette diamond, the structure clutches to the wearer’s neck with lace-like intricacy, but flows down to their collarbones, at once both structured and liquid.
The variation in the tone of Ong’s work is surprising. While pieces like The Countess have the gravitas of 19th Century royalty, others are undeniably fun. From palm trees to pears, nature is a repeated source of inspiration for the designer, particularly in her brooches, which are articulated so that they can be worn on any part of the body. Fun they may be, frivolous they are not.
“It used to be very difficult for women to know when to wear jewellery. There was a fear that people would not take you seriously,” she says, her gaze firm, her posture upright. I find it unlikely that anyone has ever taken Ong anything but seriously. “I think that has changed now. Professional women can wear jewellery as long as it suits their lifestyle. You can still be feminine and in control.”
While you may expect a jewellery designer to have an attention to detail, Ong’s work verges on the obsessive. “When I see my jewellery worn, I want it to be worn tastefully,” she says. “Some people do not know how to wear their jewellery. If they are my friends, I tell them.”
Despite her long career in the industry, she shows no signs of slowing. “With age I find I am more demanding, a higher level of perfectionist,” she says. “My work is all about detail.”
Despite this apparent newfound focus and
rather unusually for a retrospective exhibition, I
found it near impossible to pick out Ong’s older
pieces from recent creations. Although certain
recognisable motifs repeat and the collection does
not lack for new ideas, her work does not appear as
a progression; it is timeless. Perhaps this is due to
one of Ong’s greatest blessings; like her pieces, she
is nothing if not precise. 
