Paul's Story > Biography
"In my early life, at grade school and high school, I
was a difficult student. I was at the top of my class but I was
always sort of in a pickle, in some kind of trouble. However I
excelled at creative writing and I really enjoyed it. I was a very
creative kid, I was always very good with my hands, and that comes
from my parents and my grandparents. My dad designed costumes for
the theatre, and when I was a kid I would help him. So on Saturdays
and my days off from school I would work in his atelier, cutting
patterns making button holes and covering buttons, helping with
whatever it took to put together a garment. I remember going to my
grandmother's house for Sunday dinner when I was a little kid, and
it was like a fashion show. Everybody was dressed to the nines -
uncles with starched collars and cufflinks and shiny ties, aunts
all dolled up with dresses and hats - and my parents would dress my
brother and I up. One of my grandfathers was a tailor, and there
were a lot of tailors and fashion people in my family. My dad was
one of 13 children, and most of his siblings were girls, and this
was right after the depression so there was a lot of sewing going
on. They couldn't afford to buy finished pieces, so they were
creative instead. I think that creativity is hereditary, it's in
your genes, and as far back as I can remember I could just pick up
a pencil and draw.
After high school I went to a liberal arts
college. I was a journalism major, and I thought I wanted to be a
news reporter. But after finishing college my friend's brother
opened a clothing shop, a boutique, and asked me to give him a
hand. So in the late 1960s and early 1970s we designed simple
ready-to-wear stuff: boots and T-shirts and jackets. It was during
what you would call the "Dandy" or "Glam" period, a time when
things were pretty theatrical and flashy. I used to shop around in
small towns in the US, looking for vintage clothing to buy and
sell, and that's what I did for a living back then. Around that
time a friend of mine was making jewelry and he got a commission
from a clothing designer based in New York, who was doing a fashion
show and needed some accessories. My friend couldn't do it all
himself so he asked me to help him. We were making dress clips and
really funky stuff - the designer was doing these red fox stoles
and we made heads for them out of silver and plastic. And through
that I got hooked on the creative process. I started making my own
jewelry pieces on the side, working in the evenings in my basement,
and I would bring them to galleries to sell. One thing led to
another and I started making multiples and selling them at arts and
craft fairs. I was totally amazed at the first fair I did because I
sold everything on the first day. After one of those fairs I was
contacted by a buyer at Bergdorf Goodman, a big department store in
New York, who asked me to design a collection of jewelry that they
could sell - and I'm still stocked there, after all these years. So
that's kind of how I started, back in 1981. Soon afterwards I set
up a studio in Philadelphia, and we still design and manufacture
everything here, all under one roof."
Paul Morelli
