My Favourite Pieces: Anna Foster on marking milestones with jewellery

Anna Foster’s interest in jewellery started as a child, when she would watch her mother get ready for an evening out. “When she went out, I would sit at her dressing table and put on all the pieces that she hadn’t worn,” says the founder and creative director of ELV Denim, a British brand that uses upcycled materials to turn old clothing and accessories into new with minimal waste.

Jewellery has remained “personal” for the former fashion stylist, who believes people should approach clothes like they do their pieces — as being made to last. “[It] is autobiographical really and I can mark all the stages in my life through my jewellery,” she says.

Charm bracelet (date unknown)

Foster remembers her late mother wearing this yellow gold bracelet with a heart charm every day, whether cooking or playing tennis. As she got ready to go out when Foster was young, her mother would paint her nails and then put her hands through her coat, without smudging the varnish. “I don’t know how she managed this because I’ve tried to emulate this and it does not work,” says Foster. Her mother would spread her fingers so the varnish would dry, revealing her bracelet, as she said goodbye.

The bracelet was one Foster chose a few years ago when she and her sister went through their mother’s jewellery. “We didn’t have any arguments and I think that was a real testament to the variety of things that she had, and that me and my sister remembered different things about her,” she says.

Marie Lichtenberg locket (2022)

Foster has “a very open mind” regarding jewellery, not favouring a particular style or period. “I don’t ever go looking for something; it always finds me, often at inappropriate times,” she says.

When she came across this Lichtenberg locket in London department store Liberty in December 2022, she bought it to mark four years of ELV Denim at the end of a year she felt was a “milestone” of success due to expansion, high-profile collaborations and a UK innovation award.

“I always naively thought that jewellery had to be given to you but actually now I’ve changed that [opinion] and I see things as milestones, as memories,” she says.

The 18-carat rose gold diamond-set locket from the Parisian jeweller, worn on a cord chain, features the words “Bring me luck” and symbols including a horseshoe and a four-leaf clover. It serves as a “self-reminder” to Foster when she puts it on every day. “It gives me a little bit of self-purpose and that confidence to be, ‘Yeah, this [way of manufacturing clothes] is the right way’,” she says. “‘This is what I want to be doing’, and, ‘Don’t give up’.”

Customised Carolina Bucci ring (2015)

Another piece Foster wears daily is the 18-carat rose gold ring she bought with money she inherited from her grandmother, who herself had “some great jewellery”. “I felt this would be something she would have approved of,” says Foster.

The piece features her initial, “A”, in pavé diamonds on labradorite. Bucci, the Italian jewellery designer with whom Foster worked on campaigns when she was a stylist, selected a stone that Foster says “went between green and brown” depending on the light. However it cracked over time and Foster chose a replacement blue stone last year.

“I get a lot of compliments about it,” she says. “Every time I get compliments about my jewellery . . . it reaffirms the fact that I have things that match my personality.”

Fernando Jorge earrings (2024)

Her friends clubbed together to give Foster a 50th birthday present of a pair of gold and diamond earrings from Jorge’s Fluid collection at a celebratory dinner earlier this year. She had admired the Brazilian jewellery designer’s pieces when working as a stylist and says the earrings, which she has worn since for special occasions, “feel as fluid as water”.

She was “flabbergasted” when she received the gift. “That’s what those earrings will always be — that element of surprise,” she says. “And pride that these people, my friends [who] mean so much to me . . . showed that I mean so much to them. That is one of those feelings that is priceless.”

Mappin & Webb necklace and bracelet (1980s)

Foster remembers as a child her father buying this gold-and-silver set, whose design she feels remains “so relevant” 40 years on, for her mother. It “means everything” to her to now wear it daily. “I miss her every single day,” she says.

As much of her jewellery has a family connection, so Foster is hoping to share pieces with her teenage daughter. She has already created a box of special clothes with labels detailing where she wore the outfits and why, and plans to do the same for her jewellery so as to preserve the history and memories it holds. “I would hope that her grandchildren will be wearing it in a hundred years’ time,” she says.