In the Pink

When it comes to pink and sparkly, nobody does it better than Anne-Marie Forgie.

The Oamaru jewellery designer is well known for her passion for colour - particularly pink - right down to the letter-box at her distinctive home, Lavender Cottage.

Her foray into jewellery design began almost accidentally when she made Christmas decorations for her daughter Summer's teachers at Oamaru Intermediate School and they wore them as jewellery.

She started making jewellery for herself and friends, and word gradually spread as she found herself making commissioned pieces.

A breakthrough came in 2006 when Anne-Marie won the Crystal Pacific category in the inaugural Art of Costume Jewellery Awards, held in conjunction with New Zealand Fashion Week in Auckland.

Fashion designer Liz Mitchell, who was one of the judges, was so taken with her winning entry that she wore it for her own fashion show during Fashion Week.

From there, making jewellery became more than a hobby and the mother-of-two started to believe in herself "a bit more" and realised there might be a market for her designs.

She already had a friendship with New Zealand fashion doyenne Trelise Cooper, which began over a passion for the designer's clothes.

For a birthday present, her husband Michael flew her to Auckland and gave her a voucher to spend at Cooper's shop.

The couple stayed in a hotel with a view directly on to the shop and Anne-Marie laughed as she recalled how she kept looking at the shop all night and went down three or four times to look in the window.

After trying on most of the clothes in the shop, the young mother from Oamaru left, armed with a dress and a top, "feeling a million dollars".

The shop assistants had been "so lovely", and fussed over her, that she wrote directly to Cooper, saying that she had "the best time" and had been made to feel so special.

The designer wrote back, thanking her for taking the time to write, and a friendship developed.

Several years later, Cooper invited her to attend Fashion Week, which was "like a dream".

After writing a note to Cooper to tell her about winning the jewellery award, the designer suggested they have lunch when Anne-Marie was next in Auckland.

It was during that lunch that Cooper asked if Anne-Marie wanted to put some of her jewellery in the Trelise Cooper store in Auckland - a suggestion that Anne-Marie jumped at.

As well as being stocked in the store, her jewellery is also available at Woodstock on Windsor in Invercargill and Lavish Soap in Oamaru.

She hopes to also find an outlet in Christchurch.

Most of her business was commissioned pieces and her customers were not shrinking violets, she said with a laugh.

That was the type of work that she loved, as she was not interested in making generic pieces.

Coming up with ideas was never a problem, she said.

Working from home has worked well as her priority has always been her children, son Tasman (15) and daughter Summer (18), who is in her first year studying at Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin.

She has been fortunate, too, to have an "incredibly supportive" husband.

Her office is, not surprisingly, very feminine and pink, even down to the calendar on the wall and her chair.

Her beads are mostly sourced from the United States.

It has very much been a process of trial and error for Anne-Marie, who is self-taught.

"I don't know if I'm doing anything right, because I've taught myself," she says.

She was constantly learning and, looking back, some of the early pieces she made were "pretty heinous" although, at the time, she thought they were beautiful, she said, laughing.

Anne-Marie recently travelled to Auckland to view Cooper's summer 2011 collection on the deck of Queen Mary 2, an experience she described as "awesome".

Blue, she revealed, was very much the "in" colour for that season.

But as far as her own favourite colour was concerned, she was still sticking to pink.