The Watermelon Sugar Challenge Legacy
Over the years my brand has come to be known by loyal followers for my Watermelon Sugar Challenge; a social media trend led by my instagram followers since I first established my business in 2021. Whilst you might recognize the name from one Mr. Harry Styles, the inspiration really starts and finishes with the naming of the collection itself; tying together the colours of watermelon tourmalines with their uncanny ‘sweet-like’ appearance. What it really plays on are the beautiful colour combinations included in my most well-known Watermelon Sugar collection which features bicolour tourmalines front and centre.
How It All Began
Before I tell you about the Challenge itself, it may be helpful to explain how this collection came to be. To support me when I first started my brand, my mum commissioned my first ever piece of bespoke jewellery. And the best part was that she granted me full creative freedom to explore my own ideas. We had seen a bicolour tourmaline together on a recent trip, and decided that this would be a good starting point. Having come from a traditional British brand, I followed the conventions of design closely, setting it in a prong setting and flanking this with a customary pavé shank. However to make it feel more “me” I played around with the colours featured in the band and ended up including a row of pink and a row of green tourmalines that picked up on the different colours featured in the stone. I was still finding my feet as an independent designer and this project gave me the opportunity to start to explore my own ideas whilst drawing from my experience working for a more traditional jewellery brand.
Once the piece was finished I posted it online and was delighted when many others reached out to enquire after getting their own made. And from this the collection grew to include pendants, studs and drop earrings, and this range quickly became the foundational collection of my brand. It also led to the incorporation of pink and green into most of my brand’s visuals, and led to features like the Watermelon Sugar Challenge.
Brand DNA Goes Deeper
This Challenge consisted of customers, followers and friends sharing photos with me of things they had spotted in pink and green from a wide array of themes including drinks, interiors, fashion, fragrances, and even in nature. I was so touched to see it gaining traction and encouraged by the impact it had on my brand in growing a dedicated following.
Back then I would reshare all of the images sent to me tagged #watermelonchallenge to my Instagram stories, which built even more traction for my pieces and for my brand. Also growing this audience on instagram led me to so many other creative entrepreneurs across a wide spectrum of businesses. One particularly exciting connection made was with Daisy and Liv from Salad Days Market. I came across their events in 2022 and decided to apply for one. After partaking in one of their infamous small business markets in Crystal Palace, I was delighted to be invited to take part in their Selfridges pop-up the following year; and as luck would have it, their inspiration that year was: PINK AND GREEN. Synchronicity at its finest!
All of these factors led to my own increased interest in colour theory as I started thinking about why these colour combinations captured people's imaginations. Having a background in applied art meant I understood that the stones I was using were composed of complimentary colours (ametrine is purple and yellow, watermelon tourmaline is pink and green). Inspired, I began to explore colour chemistry and how colours interact with one another. This theme has continued throughout my expanding collections as I have delved deeper into colour combinations and how these create a variety of effects and impacts.
