When did you decide to take both of your experiences and talents and work together to make Yunus & Eliza?

Eliza- It was pretty much organic. We’d originally just been experimenting, when we first met each other we started making installations together, like private commissions, and then we started doing smaller and smaller bits.

Yunus – It was just a bit of fun at the start, and we were just playing around with things

Eliza - When we were doing smaller stuff we were just playing around. But then someone saw the Poseidon Ring and said they were going to put it in the paper, which we thought was amazing but we hadn’t really twigged. Then I remember saying to him, “start a company with me” and he said “Yeah”. Then I said, should we call it Yunus & Eliza and he said yeah.

Then in 2010, only two years after you met, you won the BFC for new talent, how was that? 

Yunus- Amazing really. We were at that stage where we weren’t sure whether to really go for it or start doing bigger stuff as well, whether we should just concentrate on jewellery. When that award came along, it made us stick with it.

Eliza- It made us commit, and suddenly we were part of the fashion world, which was a big change because we are artists.

Yunus- But that background has given us great freedom...

Eliza- Yeah, because we didn’t come through fashion college it kind of makes us quite free and it makes it much more fun that way.

What is it about the beauty of the inner beast that inspires your latest collection? What is it that you love about the inner beast? 

Eliza- I think that things can look very beautiful on the outside, but can have much more to them... At first it can look quite dark and frightening, when actually that's what often makes the outside beautiful. The fact that beauty is so fleeting is what makes something beautiful, that it can’t last forever. That’s what’s so interesting about making something with metal because it can last forever and you’ve captured this moment.

So much work goes into every single piece, if a client wants a piece from you, do you make that one piece for one person?  

Eliza- If someone comes in and wants a bespoke piece, we’ll make a bespoke piece. But In terms of orders, people do just order and we’ve started holding a bit of stock so it’s not such a nightmare when private orders come through.

How long does it take? 

Eliza- People often ask that and it’s really tricky to quantify. It depends if we are reproducing a piece that we already have.

Yunus-  Due to the nature of the process each one is different, but stocklists obviously want them exactly how they see them and so we have to make them as perfect as possible.

Even with the mould that it’s made with, it comes out slightly different? 

Yunus- Yeah

Eliza- Because it’s hand-made, not factory made

Yunus- So if the temperature of the metal is slightly different, it can have a different effect on how it’s forming...  there are so many parts to the processes...

Eliza- In terms of how long it takes, we never do just one piece start to finish in one day because some of the processes can take up to 48 hours in the kiln, so it’s kind of tricky to quantify. But we’ve started outsourcing some of the production which freezes up a lot of time. We’re not really in it to reproduce the same thing again and again because that’s not interesting.

You have your standard work that you make and you have these large beautiful pieces like the lovely statues and big headpieces. Do people come in and see your work and ask for those things to be made specifically for them? 

Eliza- Yeah, people have come in and see this giant head piece and asked could we make another similar one.

Yunus- They’ll come in, maybe going to a masked ball, and ask for something to be made.

Eliza- Those are the sort of pieces we really love doing, those kinds of funked-up couture, big art pieces. Running our brand, we run two kind of lines really, the more commercial ready-to-wear line of luxury jewellery - unique pieces of art which we put a lot of work into -  and then having individuals come to us to make something specifically for them and we pour our time and souls into.

Yunus- Every collection will have a piece so people can buy into the collection and I think that’s important because we want it to be something for everybody

Does the BFC help you get funding? 

Eliza- It’s funded our places at Fashion Week for 2 seasons...

Yunus- And it’s given us some amazing contacts

Eliza- And mentoring and business support.  

How do you feel the London fashion crowd has welcomed you into the fashion world? 

Yunus- It’s been really amazing actually

Eliza- I think people are quite surprised by us because we are not quite what they expect, but we've made lots of friends.

What do you think they are surprised about? 

Eliza- I don’t know, that maybe we don’t conform like we’re meant to. We don’t necessary fit in exactly or wear or know the right stuff, we don’t know about avid designers

Yunus- Yeah, we’re quite green to the fashion world.

Do you see yourself making pieces for fashion designers and collaborating with them? 

Eliza- Absolutely yeah.

Yunus- We are in talks with lots of designers at the moment. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but its finding the right time and space to do it. We want to give it the right attention rather than doing it for the sake of getting press.

Would you design for high street stores? 

Eliza- We’ve been wondering about this recently as loads of people are at the moment. I don’t know

Yunus- I don’t know either, we wouldn’t want to compromise what we want to do just for the money.

Eliza- You know it’s funny, at the moment we’re learning to be so much more business minded.

Yunus- That’s something that surprised me a lot in fashion, how much of it is about business and not so much about the inspiration.

Do you have anyone in particular when you are designing your collections? 

Eliza- I think each other.

Yunus- Yeah I think so. We’ve got quite completely different perspectives, so we clash quite a lot on things when it comes to inspiration. But it’s really healthy because we can play off each other a lot.

Eliza- I always go much darker, and Yunus will go much more beautiful.

Yunus- It’s quite a contrast but it works really well. And we’re quite honest with each other if we don’t think something is working, we’ll say, ‘that’s crap’ . Because once you get involved in a process it can take days so if you aren’t on the right path, you’re wasting your time.

Have you ever been through the whole process of making something and moulding it and hated the end result? 

Eliza- Yeah, but you can look at it in the morning and hate it, and by the next day you think, ‘holy crap this is amazing’. So try not to take an angle grinder to it at that moment, we have to live with it for a bit first. We’ve got a whole drawer full of stuff that hasn’t made the cut.

What’s the most challenging part about designing a collection? 

Eliza- Giving it coherency I think.

Yunus- Yeah I guess so, because you start with an idea and you start drawing, and when you start physically making the pieces, you can go off in so many different paths that suddenly you’ve got potentially 20 other pieces

Eliza- So we have to keep ourselves in check. They have to have a similar language and they have to loosely relate to each other.

You have these hidden bits in the collection, like in some of your rings, and you don’t really notice because you become so in awe of it. For example, when you look closely at one ring you see some bling within it. What makes you add those kinds of things? What makes you want to add that element of surprise?

Yunus-  For exactly that same reaction that you gave. So it becomes a personal thing to someone.

Eliza- It gives it luxury as well I think. I think it comes with the pieces becoming invested with an idea. That ring that you mentioned is called Child Prodigy, the stones within it are the boys glaring in his mind, till eventually his genius has disintegrated part of his head! On other pieces the choice of translucent enamel is so there is a layering of concepts.

 Why is that particular ring red?

Eliza- For me, it’s because it’s gothic and decadent. I’ve come to think of it like a graphic novel, like a Frank Miller novel or something, like a splash of red across the page and then the zingy colour really jumps out at you.

Does the balance between hard-core gothic element and beauty ever drive you crazy? 

Eliza- To start with, but less now.

Yunus- We pass the pieces between us and we’re not too precious about it in the end stages. There are a few pieces where one of us might take more control, but generally it’s back and forth. But I’ll often cut or change something if it’s going too dark and Eliza will alter things if they are too saccharine for her.

Eliza- Hmm yes, I need to be kept in check. The good thing is though is that we keep our own work going. I’ve just done a big sculpture commission, so that’s where we can do whatever we want to do. And then when we come together and collaborate we see it brings other sides of us out, and the mixture is satisfying and motivating. I don't think we'd be making such collections on our own.

The Poseidon  piece was the first piece you made together.  What made you have Poseidon’s face on a ring as your first piece? 

Eliza- We’ve just read a lot of Greek myths

Yunus- Yeah, I can’t remember what stage we were at, but there was something I liked about the idea of the beard morphing around the finger. Eliza was reading some Greek stories and it just suddenly occurred to us to make it into a piece

Eliza- Again it happened quite organically, we didn’t know what we were making. We began just talking about it and then it just grew

Did you reference sculptures or history books on Poseidon to get it right? 

Yunus- Yeah, to help give the right curves and such. And often we use each other’s faces to work on, which is always the way in sculpture.

Eliza- Although can I just say I do not look like Poseidon.

Yunus- It’s really helpful to have a model when it comes to drawing and sculptures.

Eliza- My training is in portrait sculpture, so I’ve come from doing a lot of stone carving and a lot of clay modelling from life so it made sense to do portrait.

Who are your IDOLS? 

Yunus- Music is quite a big influence to me

Eliza-  Yeah me too, I love the bassist from Talking Heads, it made me want to pick up the bass to try and copy them. My siblings really inspire me too, as I’m one of seven children. Vivienne Westwood as well, I love that she says what she wants to say, she’s hilarious and I love that she’s always being herself and her designs are amazing too.

Yunus- Thomas Heatherwick, he’s a designer architect and he inspires me a lot. He uses a lot of natural forms in his architecture and he always used to say that no idea is too crazy or too stupid and that you have to speak your thoughts, and as soon as you have them you should write them down otherwise they’ll be lost.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? 

Eliza- Keeping it going and selling internationally

Yunus- Opening up into more areas.

Eliza- Yeah, we love cross-over stuff, film, the arts, theatre.

Yunus- We'd like to open up a shop selling our jewellery and interior design.

Eliza- ...making beautiful objects on a larger scale.

Interview by Ryan Davis