Jen Neame Collins was, for me, love at first sight. I chose her as the recipient of my “MissGio Award” during the international event of Roma Jewelry Week, in my beloved city of Rome. An event that is not only a celebration of jewelry, but also a true stage for culture, art, and creativity, capable of bringing to the capital the most innovative and surprising voices of the international jewelry scene.
It was an honor to present the award to Atelier Jen in such a vibrant context and, with the same emotion, I am delighted to announce that once again this year I will confirm the MissGio Award for Roma Jewelry Week 2025. An occasion that I hold close to my heart, representing a special moment of sharing, discovery, and celebration of jewelry in all its forms.
In this setting rich with encounters and wonder, Atelier Jen’s work immediately caught
my attention. She possesses a surprising creative force: the ability to take a fragile, everyday material such as paper and transform it into something precious, resilient, and luminous. It is the enchantment of her artistic gaze that makes each piece special, a jewel not for its material value, but for the emotion it conveys.
Her story is a tapestry of color, passion, and research. After a career in textile design and decoration, Jen found her true canvas in jewelry: layers of recycled paper glued, painted, decorated with gold or silver leaf, transformed into light yet resilient small sculptures. She calls them “charms”: unique, radiant objects that move with the wearer and capture the light at every moment.
What makes her work so extraordinary is that Jen does not follow trends, she creates for the sheer joy of creating. Each piece is an explosion of ornament, color, excess, and playfulness; a declaration of freedom and self-expression that speaks directly to the heart.
Her inspirations stretch across an extraordinary universe: Versailles, Yayoi Kusama, Dolly Parton, the Pantheon in Paris, flowers, fashion magazines, a fragment of vintage fabric stumbled upon by chance. Jen is a true magpie: if something sparkles, glimmers, or sings in color, it will find its way into her hands and become part of her art.
Beyond jewelry, Jen has also created a line of reinvented vintage handbags, enriched with her decorative charms, transforming them into unique and unrepeatable pieces.
And this is precisely what I love about her work: its ability to amaze and to move. Standing before her jewels, one is reminded that beauty can be born anywhere, even from paper, and be transformed into an extraordinary gift.
An ode to the freest, most spontaneous, and joyful creativity. Because the beauty of jewelry, and I say this wholeheartedly, lies in its endless power to surprise us. And perhaps this is the greatest gift of jewelry: its ability to bring us back to childhood, to make us marvel once again at something beautiful, unusual, and unlike anything else.
Jen Neame Collins’ jewelry reminds us that one does not need diamonds to shine: all it takes is the magic of an idea, the strength of an emotion, and the freedom to be inspired.
It is in this spirit that each year I choose to confirm the MissGio Award at Roma Jewelry Week: to give voice and space to those who can move us with their work, to those who bring art, color, and poetry into the world of jewelry.
Because, in the end, this is what jewelry is: a small everyday miracle that accompanies us, tells our story, and makes us smile.