Look Book

D E S I G N E R U P C L O S E K I N G B A B Y "A fellow from Tokyo fl ew over to L.A. with a brief- case full of cash and bought everything out of my garage that I'd made. I couldn't believe it." Mitchell took the cash, quit Warner Brothers, and started King Baby Studio. That was all in 2000. Another big break became when a friend of Mitchell's walled into a Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills, and a manager stopped and ask where he'd gotten his brace- let. It was a King baby design. "I fl ew to Dallas, and the meeting started with one person, then two people, then before you know it the room was about 20 people full, and the CEO of Neiman Marcus came in, and they all said, 'We don't know what this is but we want to try it,' "Mitchell recalls. He picked a few cities to test his product at Neiman stores: Las Vegas, Miami, and Beverly Hills. They were sold out in 10 days. Neiman Marcus took King Baby nationwide, and Mitchell became the fastest vendor to hit $1 million in sales in the department store's history. "And I still hold that title today. That was pretty cool. That changed everything." Sigmund Freud coined the term King Baby to "de- note a mental condition where the patient believes the world revolves around them," Mitchell says. "I read that and I said, you know, some of my customers are a lot like that. And maybe I'm a little bit like that. So that's where the name [of the studio] came from." But Mitchell doesn't have a bad word to say his famous clientele – some of whom, like Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith, he met in his early days in California. Other friends Mitchell's made lately? Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Manganiello, aka Mr. Sofi a Vergara. But it's not just big buff dudes wear his King Baby stuff. There are also Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, Howard Stern, Bruce Willis, and a mile-long list musicals artist, as well. He names two reason why is jewelry works for per- formers and other celebs: 1. He makes large pieces that can show up onstage (including guitar straps), and 2. His Santa Monica store is not a paparazzi haven. "I'm proudly on the last industrial street [in the city], "he says After waking up in the middle of the night with an idea, sketching it and making sense of it the next morn- ing, Mitchell will collect what he calls 'inspiration photos" – images that "convey the tone, idea, and feel of the piece or the collection I'm working on." He'll cull his sketched down to the best designs. Then come fi nal renderings, wax carvings, rubber molds, and fi nally pouring the metal itself. King baby uses silver and gold/ bass alloy, "all kinds of gemstones," leather, and exotic skins including stingray and snakeskins. Mitchell insist's he'll probably never really retire. "I'll never live long enough to make all the things I want to make, "he says. 21 www.thejewelrybook.com

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