When I first saw Pamela at a fashion show with her stop-dead-in-my tracks tousled, earthy mane of hair, Peruvian-inspired poncho, mixed with some rock-and-roll black leather pants, I knew that I had to get up the nerve to do my SLU schpiel and get her for this site (and this was before I became aware of her looks-like-you-got-it-on-an-archeological-dig-in-Mexico jewelry - I wanted it all!). Keep reading below. This was originally posted on StyleLikeU.com
Pamela Love from Stylelikeu.com
True to what I expected, when I came to do this interview, Pamela, a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist, fueled my love for her kind of '70s, natural, indigenous and eclectic style. Her clothes are unaffected perfection, whether in her vintage, floor-length Diane Freis hippie dress (I have been chasing after one for myself ever since) or in her Southwestern chunky cardigan and jeans. However, her curation of jewels, both ones that she has created and those she has picked up, is a virtual exhibit of her taste for authenticity and cultural mythology. Pamela's fascination with archetypal, raw imagery permeates in her iconic claw bangles, raven skull necklaces, eagle talon earrings, and oversized crosses that she makes and equally, in everything she collects, from the geo ring she found at the airport to the Native-American children's arrow one.
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Pamela's obsession with collecting does not end on her limbs - her apartment is an exposé of her intense attraction to "curating." (She says that when she was a child, she developed a compulsion to unite corresponding or like objects). Today, she lives amongst an explosion of fossils, crystals, afterlife iconography, and scientific and medical imagery (her dad was a surgeon) - it is an environment that reflects her originality and gives insight into the inner-workings of the mind of a creative virtuoso. Pamela's jewelry resonates with a kind of shamanic thinking that drives her to spend the majority of her time "uncontrollably" making it. Each piece is a keeper, a collector's item, it's the kind that belongs to you.
"[As a child], I collected stamps, I collected coins, I collected crystals, I collected fossils. It came to a point where I became a collector of collections. Collecting objects and making a collection - there is a similar mental process." -Pamela Love
If you like Pamela, you might also enjoy Chase Cohl, Liza Thorn, Erika von Petrin, Kristine Barilli, or Carter Emmart