Fashion and Jewellery Designer of the Year 2025: Andrea Blais

Minimalism in design is typically defined by the old maxim that less is more. But for Kelowna-based jewellery designer Andrea Blais, her love of minimalism allows more to be more—thicker, sculpted metal for rings, fewer but larger stones, high-grade polish for high-contrast shine.

“I’ve always been drawn to minimalism—just generally as an aesthetic—but when it comes to jewellery, I think it really comes down to the materials,” says our 2025 Fashion and Jewellery Designer of the Year, who works mainly with gold, sterling silver, freshwater pearls and gemstones.

The Kelowna-via-Calgary designer developed her practice after taking night classes in jewellery making at Alberta College of Art and Design. “I just fell madly in love with it… I didn’t necessarily go into it with that intention, but it grew into that as I was able to,” says Blais, who soon decided to pursue a four-year bachelor of fine arts in the discipline. “It feels organic. My whole life, I’ve just gone with the flow and I see what takes me where.”

Still, there was an echo from childhood that hinted at the designer’s eventual life’s work. “As a little girl, I was always making little beaded jewellery,” she says. “It was always tiny, always three-dimensional. I dabbled in painting and more 2D stuff, but I was drawn to sculpture.”

The jewellery she designs for her clients—among them Canadian music icon Jann Arden—indeed are wearable sculptures, in the form of statement pieces and cocktail rings that inspire (nay, demand) conversation. Take the Stasia, a custom aquamarine, freshwater pearl, diamond and platinum ring made for Alberta photographer Stasia Schmidt. The toi et moi ring features a large-cut aquamarine set opposite a giant freshwater pearl, and the band (which features two settings and doesn’t make a complete circle) is sprinkled with small diamonds for an “iced” effect.

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“It’s a bit heavy, but it’s not an everyday ring. It’s a cocktail ring, a statement piece. It’s okay that it’s got some weight to it,” says Blais. “Being able to bring in those icy elements with the diamonds—it brought it all together.”

Blais taps into the power of emotion to create her one-of-a-kind pieces for her clients, and that’s especially evident in the ring she created for Arden. The custom 14K white and yellow gold ring, featuring diamonds and a single peridot, is modelled on a first ring by Blais that was crafted using Arden’s mother’s heirloom diamonds. At the time of making the original, Arden’s mom Joan was suffering from dementia. When Arden lost the original, the designer did a custom remake, with enough tweaks that it felt new.

“That was such an emotional roller coaster, that piece,” Blais says. “She wanted something similar, but not exactly the same. She had asked if we could have her mom’s name written on the ring somehow and I was having a hard time visualizing how that would look on the outside of the ring, so I suggested just engraving it on the inside of the ring with her mom’s birthstone. There’s something nice about having something on the inside of the ring, too, because it’s against your skin.”

Blais is a designer who takes inspiration from nature and emotion—and when her client Rita approached her to create a “bold but feminine” 14K recycled yellow gold ring with Akoya saltwater pearls, she was thrilled to make something for a fellow pearl-lover. The result was a shiny, thick and melty gold band with three pearls graduating in size, wide enough that they cover the top of the finger. “There’s such a simple beauty with playing around with sizes and repetition. I refer to it as a pulse of light expressed in pearls. It’s like a burst, just getting bigger,” Blais says.

The simplicity of minimalist design allows the materials to shine when contrasted with a maximalist approach. “Minimalism really lets those materials sing and, having that nice big surface of high-polish metal, you get the reflective nature of it and you get all those beautiful curves that are highlighted by that reflection.”

Our judges can agree that Blais’s designs are both reflective and bold in their simplicity. “She knows how to make a piece feel personal without overworking it,” write Pyrrha’s Wade and Danielle Papin, while Irina Flore of Studio Flore notes that the designs are “quietly powerful, beautifully made and full of meaning.”

That quiet power lies in Blais’s ability to take seemingly simple elements—like pearls—and make them bigger, shinier and, well, more.

Q&A: Andrea Blais on Design

What was your first design project?

I don’t think this was my first project, but it was early on in my education and left a big impact on me. One of the classes that I took at Alberta College of Art and Design (now AUArts) was a jewellery drawing class. I drew a simple line drawing of a dandelion gone to seed with some of the seeds dispersed and floating away. I later used the same design in a wide silver cuff bracelet, which was the first piece of jewellery I ever sold—and the person who purchased the bracelet loved the design so much she ended up getting a tattoo of it on her arm. The fact that someone connected to something that I designed and created so much they wanted it on their body forever was such an honour to me—and still is.

What are you listening to?

Lately, I’m all about the nostalgia. Depeche Mode, The Cure, I will always love The Talking Heads—the songs that you went through your formative years with will always hit you in a way like nothing else.

Is there a famous project or object you wish you’d designed?

I remember being so inspired when I first saw the bone cuff designed by Elsa Peretti. It looks like liquid metal flowing over the wrist. A simple but brilliant idea executed perfectly.

 

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