When Lauren Weiner was bored one day, she decided to take apart an old, broken necklace.
In the process of deconstructing it, she added other objects to it and ended up with a completely new necklace and a new profession — reconstructing vintage jewelry.
The Baton Rouge native and University alumna’s jewelry line, HEAVYmetalbyLW, has since been featured from the catwalk to the silver screen.
She gives credit for her line’s rising popularity to her cousin, Katie Weiner Moessner in Nashville, Tenn. Moessner wore the first necklace Weiner reconstructed to an event in Nashville where it caught the eye of stylist Amber Bowen Lehman.
Lehman’s extensive clientele, especially those in the country music scene, have helped HEAVYmetalbyLW along in its rise to fame.
The second piece of jewelry Weiner reconstructed was featured in a music video by the country duo Steel Magnolia.
This summer, Lauren Alaina, “American Idol” season 10 runner-up, wore a necklace from the line at her Grand Ole Opry debut. Most recently, Natasha Bedingfield wore a HEAVYmetalbyLW bracelet in the Rascal Flatts music video “Easy.”
Weiner likes to gather her supplies from flea markets and hardware stores, collecting bike chains, belts and other relics. The line’s name recognizes her “heavy” aesthetic.
“People tend to associate my style with big and chunky,” said Weiner.
Weiner said many people find “heaviness” attractive, but it can be uncomfortable to wear. She said she tries to make her jewelry look elaborate without all the actual weight.
Weiner said she’s not particularly interested in color and prefers the contrast between gold and silver, which she thinks is timeless. She said it gives a piece more versatility.
Weiner sometimes gets inspiration for a piece by seeing something another artist made and thinking about how she would have done it differently. She doesn’t sketch out her ideas, but has a vision in her head of what she wants to create and tries to execute it.
Weiner is inspired by things she finds. She said she’s currently using what she describes as gold bone-shaped pieces that she broke off a flea-market necklace. She also recently began using belt buckles, especially paired with watch fragments.
Weiner said when she’s designing a piece of jewelry, she pictures a certain woman and creates a character. She said she’s created several of these characters, and they all have different styles.
She describes one as being a “ridiculously wealthy, red-headed, overweight woman from Texas,” and said the character would wear pieces Weiner considers more gaudy.
In an attempt to appease the array of characters Weiner has created, she tries to make pieces that would appeal to women with flashy senses of style as well as pieces for women with simpler tastes.
Weiner said a piece she is particularly proud of is a necklace she made for a friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner. To make the necklace, Weiner used items with a special connection to the bride — a chain from her grandmother’s necklace, a button from her father’s wedding tuxedo, her mother’s class ring, her grandfather’s honorary military medals and her mother’s baby bracelet.
Weiner, who has mainly been running her business out of Tennessee, is in the process of moving back to Baton Rouge, where she intends to work on her business plan. She said she hasn’t yet mapped out her business’s future.
“It hasn’t really been in my control,” Weiner said, “I just keep making jewelry, and people keep buying