EC MUSE — Kate Kol

Learn about the founders of Kate & Kole

For Madalynne Clifton and Sara Spence, founders of Kate & Kole, the past decade has been defined by building a brand through instinct and quiet confidence. What began as appointments from a Newcastle living room has evolved into one of Australia's most considered jewellery brands, shaped by a belief that sentiment outlasts trends and that the pieces we return to most often become part of our everyday story.

EC: To begin, can you share a little about yourselves and the story behind Kate & Kole, how the brand first came to take shape, and where you both find yourselves now creatively and professionally? Sara: We started Kate & Kole more than a decade ago from a living room in Newcastle, taking appointments by referral and making one piece at a time. Maddy is our Creative Director and I’m Design Director. Maddy leads across brand and I sit more on the operations side of the business. We built slowly and made everything to order from the beginning and over time that living room grew into our Newcastle studio and a team of around thirty. Creatively and professionally, those two spaces look different for us now than they once did. Our time is in high demand, so we no longer get long open stretches to create the way we did in the early years. What’s replaced that is concentration. We’ve spent a decade honing our eye and building a brand that has become our brief, so when we sit down to create we already know the point of view. That makes the time we do get highly efficient and the work more confident.

EC: Jewellery often becomes part of someone’s everyday rhythm. What drew you to creating pieces designed to be worn often and held onto over time?

Maddy: We’re lucky that what we make often becomes something worn every day. An engagement or wedding ring might stay on a hand for fifty years or more, and there’s nothing else in your wardrobe that does that. We come back often to the idea that sentimentality wins over trends. So we concentrate on timeless designs, made by skilled artisans here in Australia from sustainable materials, because those are the pieces that earn a place in someone’s everyday and stay there. EC: What has it been like building a business within the jewellery space, and how have you found your own point of view within an industry that can often feel trend-led or oversaturated? Sara: Building in this space has taught us to be steady, both in our aesthetic and in our business model. We innovate constantly, but the discipline for us is in not following what’s happening right now. We try to think of what's next instead. That’s where our point of view comes from. Staying consistent enough to be recognisable, while always looking a step ahead of the moment. EC: Fashion and jewellery naturally inform one another. How does your relationship with fashion shape the way you approach design, styling and the collections you create? Maddy: Fashion is always part of the conversation for us. It informs how we style a collection, how we photograph it, the way a piece sits with everything else someone’s wearing - but we hold it a little at arm’s length when it comes to design. Fashion moves fast and jewellery doesn’t, so we let it shape the styling and the mood more than the pieces themselves. The collections need to outlast whatever’s current, so we look to fashion for direction and energy, then design for longevity.

EC: Are there particular references, objects or experiences you continually return to for inspiration, whether in design, travel, art or everyday life?

Sara: We just got back from New York and it was honestly incredible. Between Covid and having a young family, travelling over the past six or seven years has been really challenging, so we made the most of every second. It was the smaller independent galleries, The RealReal for vintage fashion, not one disappointing meal and the space and busyness of the city to brainstorm endlessly. We came back with a set of ideas we’re really excited to roll out over the next twelve months.

EC: Working closely together, how do your individual perspectives differ, and how has that dynamic helped shape the identity of Kate & Kole? Maddy: Sara and I see things differently and that’s the point. She lives in the detail and the structure, how a piece is made, how the business runs underneath it all. I sit more with the feeling and the story, how it all comes across and connects with people. We don’t always start in the same place, but we almost always meet in the middle and the brand lives in that middle ground. It’s considered and it’s felt at the same time. After working together this long, those two perspectives have stopped being separate. They’ve become the identity of Kate & Kole itself.

EC: What motivates you creatively now, and what continues to hold your interest as the brand evolves?

Sara: We’re absolutely obsessed with what we’re building and I think you have to be, because it’s pretty full on. We work most days and evenings in some capacity and it’s tricky to switch off. We’ve become better at finding balance, though it’s not traditional balance, and we’re getting better at accepting that too. That obsession is the thing that keeps holding our interest. As the brand evolves there’s always a next piece, a next idea, a next part to get right and we still genuinely want to be the ones to do it.