DYME

Brand Concept • Creative Direction • AI Image Direction

A fictional diamond house. I built it to find out what high jewellery looks like when you take it out of the vitrine.

Diamonds are still sold the way they were sold in 1955. Soft focus, a proposal, a promise, a stone photographed like it has never touched a body. I wanted to put them on somebody who has been standing in the heat all afternoon, in a room with a fan on the floor, and see whether they survive it.

(all images & videos are AI generated by me)

A black and white portrait of a person with short hair, partially obscured by large white feathered leaves, with they wearing a piercing on their lower lip and looking at the camera.
A Mercedes-Benz logo decorative pin adorned with rhinestones resting on a metallic surface.
A collage of black and white photographs featuring women in fashionable clothing and jewelry, some poses with hands and rings, long dresses, accessories like earrings, rings, and necklaces, and abstract art pieces with jewelry and textures.
A collage of black and white photographs featuring women in fashionable clothing and jewelry, some poses with hands and rings, long dresses, accessories like earrings, rings, and necklaces, and abstract art pieces with jewelry and textures.

Heritage
Reimagined

The Name

A dime is the smallest coin in the pocket. Seventeen millimetres, ten cents, and it is worth more than the coin twice its size.

DYME makes nothing small. The pieces are oversized to the point of absurdity: clusters that cover an ear, bracelets that reach the knees and diamond rings that are worn on almost each finger. The name is the only modest thing here.

There is a reason dimes have ridged edges. People used to shave slivers of silver off coins, so the ridges were added to make the theft visible. A security measure on ten cents. I like that even ten cents was worth protecting.

The World

I directed everything in places diamonds usually do not belong. Cracked plaster, bare concrete, a white plastic stool, the bonnet of an old car. The stones are lit like the person wearing them rather than like product.

No heirlooms, no milestones, no proposals. You put the stones on and you go out.

A Mercedes-Benz hood ornament adorned with a diamond-encrusted Mercedes-Benz logo and a floral diamond design, resting on a reflective, weathered metal surface.
A black and white portrait of a woman wearing a luxurious fur coat and a large, sparkling earring, looking directly at the camera.
Two pieces of jewelry with pearl-like, gem-encrusted spherical tops, placed on white paper against a dark background.
Close-up black and white portrait of a person with short hair, wearing a feathered outfit and a lip ring, looking into the camera.
Close-up black and white image of a human ear with an earring made of multiple sparkling gemstones, surrounded by dark hair.
A woman dressed in black fashion standing next to a stylized silver car against a white wall.
A model with dark skin and a shaved head, wearing a black sheer long-sleeve top and black pants, is crouching next to a vintage electric fan. She is touching the fan with her right hand and has a large ring on her left hand. Behind her, there is a wh
Close-up of a person wearing a transparent high-heeled shoe with glitter, an anklet, and dark textured skin.
A woman with voluminous curly hair wearing a long black dress sitting on a bed covered in silver rhinestones in a minimalist room with a distressed white wall.
Two hands clasped together, with rings featuring large diamonds, signaling unity and strength. The image is in black and white, emphasizing texture and contrast.
A person with a shaved head, wearing white pants and a decorative top with pearl-like chains, is crouching on top of a white stool against a textured white wall with peeling paint.
A woman with dark skin and voluminous, curly black hair is wearing a black dress made of feathers and long strands of rhinestones or crystals. She is standing against a white, textured wall with cracks.
A woman dressed in black with a long flowing cape is kneeling near a small electric fan on a concrete floor against a white wall with peeling paint.

ON THE MAKING

I generated and directed every image and video myself. No photographer, no crew, no set.

Casting, light, placement and material all got decided in language before anything existed. Then the slow part: holding a frame steady once it was right, changing one thing at a time.

Scale was the other rule. Because the pieces are big, the frames had to be close. A huge cluster on a full-length figure just looks like jewellery. On a cropped ear, with the ear right there for scale, it looks like too much.