Interview with Aura Copeland

Listen to “Interview with Aura Copeland” on Spreaker.

Born in Lithuania, Aura Copeland was fascinated from an early age by beauty, elegance, and aesthetic perfection–as well as by the elusive glamour of a beauty-enhancing imperfection. After studying architecture at Vilnius Academy of Art in Lithuania, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a model and attended Fashion Institute of Technology, earning her degree in accessory design. Most recently, she has worked as a footwear designer at Adoni Group in New York.
Aura is also the co-founder of a New York based charity organization, Les Couleurs Charity. Dedicated to bringing the arts and educational opportunities to underprivileged kids in the developing world,
Les Couleurs Charity organizes exclusive color-themed charity events in New York City. Lately, on behalf of her charity, Aura has been teaching art and design workshops at schools and after-school programs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She loves sharing her experience with kids who have never had access to an arts education, and she plans to bring her teaching programs into other countries soon.
Whether for her charity or her design projects, Aura travels extensively, and she draws inspiration from wherever she goes, often collaborating with traditional artisans in diverse countries to create pieces that combine her designs with their master craftsmanship. With a special enthusiasm for exotic skins, Aura is always creatively responsive to her materials, allowing them to “speak,” to have a kind of say in the designs of which they are a part, so that she develops pieces of a rare beauty and the highest quality. Her passion for exploring diverse cultures, for art history, and for fashion and design, all find their seamless expression in the creation of her own signature accessory line.
Aura’s Transvintage concept is an essential element of that line. For these pieces, Aura searches for fine pieces of vintage jewelry, which she combines with her own painstakingly precise designs, giving the pieces new life in a contemporary context. Through this time-transcending “collaboration” with designers of the past (hence, “Transvintage”), Aura creates truly unique works of wearable art that mysteriously unify past and present, and point the way to a more visionary future.
Written by Brian McCarthy

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