Designer Sophie Bouilhet-Dumas has creativity and aesthetics in her DNA. Born into the founding family of French silversmith company Christofle, art, craftsmanship and design have always been intrinsic to her life. After finishing business school, Sophie started designing objects for renowned brands such as Thomas Goode, Burberry, Paul Smith, Habitat, Christofle and Hermès. Her husband, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, is artistic director of Hermès and a sixth-generation descendant of the company’s founder.
Drawing inspiration from the garden she designed for her family’s rural Normandy retreat, Sophie has created a beautiful botanical jewelry collection under the brand Mira Stella. Seeing plants and flowers as nature’s jewels, her mission is to immortalize their beauty in the form of fine jewelry, creating timeless pieces meant to be cherished and passed down through generations.
INSPIRELLE caught up with Sophie in Paris to learn more about her work and her inspirations:
Sophie, please tell us about you and your path to becoming a jewelry designer.
I grew up in a garden lovingly cultivated by my mother. One day, I was fortunate enough to be able to create my own garden in Normandy, in collaboration with English gardener and master botanist Mark Brown. Together, we gradually brought back the butterflies and the beauty of wildflowers.
As my garden started thriving, where others saw flowers, I saw jewelry…
Perhaps it’s because I come from a family of generations of silversmiths and have worked in the world of design for a long time. I wanted to capture the grace of a hydrangea petal, the subtlety of a maritime cabbage seed or a flax pod by reproducing them identically in 18-carat rose gold. Timeless and poetic, these natural forms also possess the magic of a charm for all the promises and secrets they conceal.
What makes your jewelry unique?
Handcrafted in 18-carat rose gold by artisanal jewelers in Paris, Mira Stella jewelry invites you to take a fresh, closer look at the seeds and plants that surround us. They are the fruit of a precious collaboration with a master jeweler’s workshop in Paris, involving a meticulous pre-production process of sampling and preservation.
The seeds and petals are first harvested, then meticulously preserved in the workshop, shielded from light and humidity. They are then drawn to scale and assembled to create poetic and functional jewelry.
We use the ancestral cire perdue (lost-wax casting) technique to reproduce the delicate plant structures down to the finest detail. This precision molding technique is followed by recasting in 18-carat rose gold that is either recycled or from certified mines. Hand polishing gives a matte, satin finish to accentuate the delicacy of the plant veins. Like an alchemist, the master jeweler brings these timeless forms to life, using a noble and precious material.
What inspired the name Mira Stella?
Mira Stella is the combination of the first names of two women who loved natural gardens and flowers: my mother, Mirabelle, and my great-grandmother, Stella. I imagined these collections as family jewels that would pass on precious memories of nature from one generation to the next.
Your designs transform the sea kale seed, hydrangea petals, flax pods, garden orache seeds and oak bark into fine jewelry. Why did you choose to highlight these particular elements in your collections?
I chose these shapes because they are delicate and feminine. Each one has its own story. They embody the cycle of life and have each developed extraordinary survival strategies. We don’t necessarily know their names, but they’re familiar to us because they’ve always been there, long before we existed.
The perfect shape of a flax pod, a hydrangea petal, a kale seed, or an arrowroot seed are timeless silhouettes that dazzle us with their delicacy. At Mira Stella, Nature is the creator, and I am the mediator.
You’ve succeeded in turning your creativity and passion for nature into work that you love. What were your biggest challenges to starting up Mira Stella, and what advice would you give to others who want to turn their creative passion into a business?
I’ve been fortunate enough to set up a business that allows me to fulfil my passion for the beauty of living things, silversmithing, and craftsmanship and to share this with women who have similar values. It’s a lot of fun, but you can never take anything for granted. You can’t go too fast; allow time for ideas to mature. I created my first prototypes in 2015 and started wearing them. As other people liked my designs, I began selling them through private sales and pop-up exhibitions before eventually opening a small boutique in the Latin Quarter.
Whatever business you create, storytelling is fundamental.
It’s the foundation from which you build communication strategies to promote your business. You must be patient, act quickly and at the same time assess the risks carefully. It’s also important to take the time to analyze successes and failures. At the moment, my priority is to meet people who share my value of authenticity because that’s what gives the most meaning to my work. I’m concentrating primarily on trunk show opportunities in different countries. It’s the best way of understanding how to expand my business further.
We know you are a nature lover, and that you spend a lot of time in your garden in Normandy. Can you share with our readers some of your favorite places to enjoy nature in Paris?
In Paris, there are many parks where you can unwind and enjoy nature. The Jardin des Plantes is marvelous between May and October. I also like to stroll in the Bagatelle rose garden or Albert Kahn’s Japanese garden in Boulogne-Billancourt. These are all very romantic places.
Mira Stella boutique
2 rue Guisarde, 75006 Paris
Website: mira-stella.com
