GQ: I would love to hear more about the inspiration behind the Queen Elizabeth chain, and how the idea came to be.
Abtin Abassi: Well, the Queen, [she] represents our country, the monarchy, royalty, history. It represents our currency. There’s a lot of things behind it that just signify being English, being proud, being connected to the country and the history. The Queen was the most important woman of our country. It just made sense to use the Queen’s head just to represent the UK, represent where we’re from. And of course, like I said, she’s the face of our currency.
Courtesy of A Jewellers
Courtesy of A Jewellers
Was it an idea that he came to you with?
We both thought of it, but it was more his idea of going with the Queen’s face. He was just talking about doing something to represent being English and from London. We went back and forth on a few ideas and that was one of the ideas that we thought really made the most sense. It was only right to have the Queen’s face [and to emphasize] how it’s used in the currency, on the note, on the coin. And then [Central Cee’s] whole new thing is, “I want to do everything plain rose gold now.” So he was like, “I just want it plain rose gold.” And I was like, “Okay, well it’s going to be an amazing piece because we’re going to do the Queen’s face, it’s going to go absolutely nuts.” But I just thought to myself, I wish we could do a diamond set, because we could do so much with a diamond layout and the different stones and shapes.
So our plan went a little bit like that, just a little bit disappointed, but then all of a sudden he’s like, “Oh, I’m thinking to do it [all] bust down instead,” or “I’m thinking of doing one also in diamonds.” So I was like, “Even better, why don’t we do it 3D? Do it like an actual sculpture, make it two-sided and do one plain side, one diamond side and you can just flip it around and wear it both ways?” And then we’re like, “Wow, what an amazing idea.” It just makes perfect sense instead of having two pendants. It just makes the piece. The shape of it now is so amazing and it’s not flat. It’s 3D, it’s domed. It made everything so perfect and it came together so great. And it’s also unique and special, so I was really happy that that happened. And we managed to [make] a two-faced, coin-type medallion.
I didn’t realize it was reversible—it’s literally two sides of the coin! And Cench didn’t initially want diamonds?
No, that’s his new style. He wanted to go with everything plain rose gold. … [But] when we got to do the diamonds, there’s so much intricacy and different stone layout and design. We used different shaped diamonds in different places, the crown, the hair part, everything. … I knew it would be a piece that would go viral just because of the fact that it was a great design, but also it has a lot of meaning. It’s special and no one’s thought to do something like this, and it represents him and his country so well.
