ROME – A custom-made piece to wear, like a jewel. This is the idea of the American artist and designer Christi Schimpke, founder of the Crash automotive jewelery brand, which is becoming popular in the United States among four-wheel enthusiasts and among professionals in the world of motor sports. All thanks to the intuition that Schimpke had when he saw irrecoverable pieces of damaged supercars, which would have ended up in landfills and he thought of a sort of creative recycling, recovering these materials and transforming them into unique objects, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, cufflinks, with strong references to the brands of origin, offered for sale at prices starting from around 40 dollars but which can even exceed a thousand, when they are enriched with precious stones.
Handcrafted jewels starting from bonnets, bumpers, doors of models of brands such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Aston Martin and many other premium brands, manipulated with techniques that do not alter the essence of the car of origin. , nor the original paint, thanks to the techniques of jewelry processing and provided with the certification of the “donor” vehicle. With the result of unique pieces because they are made from an always different “raw material” that must be interpreted and adapted every time.
“The idea of creating fashion jewelry starting from cars”, explains the Californian designer who has a background in Italian Renaissance art history and a specialization in metalworking, “came to me when I moved my studio to the body shop of Los Angeles of my husband, Beverly Coachcraft, specializing in damaged European supercar repairs. Crash’s vision materialized when during breaks from my work, I watched the beautiful cars arriving at the garage for repairs and wondered what happened to the damaged parts. After many months of experimentation, I created my own unique process of cutting, bending and polishing the scrap metal and so the jewels started to take shape ”.
Today Crash jewels are gaining more and more fans, especially in the United States, but orders are also starting to arrive from Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia and, continues Schimpke, “especially among women in the automotive industry, as car drivers. racing, mechanics, engineers, journalists who after a first purchase return for repeated purchases. Men are also approaching these jewels and I am about to add other products to my men’s line ”.
The best-selling object among the increasingly numerous in the catalog is the bracelet, certainly more discreet than earrings, necklaces or cufflinks. Among the brands preferred by Crash customers, Ferrari beats everyone but Porsche and Lamborghini are also part of the podium.
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