Completedworks AW25: A Crown Jewel of London Fashion Week

“You’re anyone, you’re anywhere. You’re a duchess, you’re a queen.”

These were some of the opening words introducing the selling point of Completedworks' AW25 collection, and I can confirm the advertising didn’t lie. Last Friday I had the privilege of attending Artistic Director Anna Jewsbury’s third London Fashion Week Show at Beveridge Hall, in Bloomsbury’s Senate House. My expectations? High. Especially after attending their ethereally charming previous show on a shining September afternoon in Gordon Square, where I became smitten with the brand. It was that afternoon I started my appreciation for the way this jewellery designer subverts timelessness in a modern and innovative way, like using imperfect pearls that exude a balanced irregularity, making every piece as unique as its wearer.

Debi Mazar for Completedworks AW25.

The show, in expected trend for Completedworks, redefined the traditional runway format, and I’m sure many in the hall and beyond joined me in anticipation. We found ourselves tuning into CwTV, starring Julia, portrayed by the iconic Debi Mazar, who caused the whole room to gasp as the lights came up (completely warranted). The teleshopping hostess desperately tried to keep it together live on air despite being in the throws of having a complete nervous breakdown, from fantasising about the ‘bronze, muscular’ Henri, to needing to piss, to wanting to kill her husband Steven. 

The fifteen-minute piece was called Look at Me, written by award-winning playwright Laura Waldren, which followed in the gaze-stealing footsteps of the brand’s AW24 show Confessions of Lilith starring a toast-tossing Joanna Lumley and its SS25 show A Stone is a Small Mountain starring Dianna Agron and Lily Cole. Both previous pieces were written by the brand’s longtime collaborator Fatima Farheen Mirza, yet Waldren followed her example in creating a piece that empowers female autonomy and expression against the pressures of our society, and it can be argued that this message is a dramatisation of what the brand’s jewellery offers. Speaking to Marie Clare, Jewsbury reflected this: “It's this opportunity for self-expression, I like the small, intimate scale of jewellery.”

So, why is a jewellery and homeware brand on the London Fashion Week schedule? “What I love about showing during fashion week is you get this energy from a live format," Jewsbury told Vogue Business. “It’s exciting to me and it really enables us to give our pieces a bit more life and context. It allows us to add to the Completedworks universe in an unexpected way. Fashion week also allows us to contribute to the cultural discourse.” The idea to showcase the collection in this format was for me, a stroke of genius. Not only does it breathe personality and life into the product, but theatre is the ultimate form of engagement, outrightly grasping the audience’s attention to marvel and sell to the consumer, in a quirky tongue-and-cheek manner that gives us a giggle.

Hollie Bowden’s set was cohesive with the art-deco backdrop of Beveridge Hall. It also married with the collection itself, such as the rustic soda-lime glass coffee table adorned with matching Completedworks glassware, sculpted so uniquely as if it were pottery. Mazar's dress and makeup, as well as the displays, mimicked this frosted mint palette, evoking the same tinge of the vintage TVs dotted across the room that collaboratively built CwTV’s retro aesthetic. 

Established in 2013, Completedworks is the brain-child of two daughters of a Philippine TV presenter and furniture brand owner, having been raised in a household imbued with fashion and interior design inspiration. One of them is Anna Jewsbury, who studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Oxford, whose aesthetic is influenced by reductionism, ‘with a process drawing on the contrasts between high-quality materials and purist elements’. Her brand extends jewellery and homeware into an art form, sustainably wedding recycled and inexpensive materials with luxurious alternatives such as gold and pearls, shaping them in ‘ceramic-esque’ forms. Since its inception, the brand has prided itself on being worn by the likes of Selma Blair and Adele, being nominated for Best Accessories Designer at the 2024 British Fashion Awards and is currently being retailed at Bergdorf Goodman, Ssense, Net-a-Porter and Dover Street Market, to name a few. Not too shabby. 

Now onto the true star of the show: the AW25 collection. The designs of both the jewellery and homeware are not just sculptural, but create a sense of motion, twisting, weaving and flowing in a fashion you can’t take your eyes off. A signature style for the jeweller, the more you look at a piece, the more you find, so no matter what outfit you may wear, the conversation will be on Completedworks. 

Jewsbury spoke to Vogue Business about her inspiration for this season, explaining: “Jewellery has always been considered an added embellishment, but with this collection, we’re playing with the idea that each piece is an embellishment of an embellishment.” She couldn't have executed this idea more perfectly; my favourite piece being the matching statement set Mazar wore, huge pearls draped with miniature pearls and zirconia. The jewellery itself wore jewellery. Amongst the glimmeringly clean palette of white and gold, there were flashes of red agate beads, a welcome pop of colour. 

Baroque and extravagant as the collection is, it was all the more refreshing and brings jewellery and homeware rightfully into the hemisphere of fashion. If you ask me, their introduction of handbags and hopefully footwear soon (I’m looking at you, 'flats with spilling pearls'), couldn’t come at a better moment. With a steady yet sure trajectory to success, Completedworks have the advantage that they’re one of a kind. And what’s better, they know what they’re doing.