Wednesday, January 13, 2010

NOLA.com: Jewelry by two New Orleans designers appears regularly on the CW Network’s ‘One Tree Hill’



The first step in conquering addiction, experts say, is admitting you have a problem. For Madilynn Nelson and Julie Little, that realization came in the middle of the Pontchartrain Center during a bead show.

“At one point, we looked at each other like crazy, gambling drunks, and thought, we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to sell what we make to fuel this habit or we’ll go broke,” Nelson joked.

From there, the two turned a shared hobby into a fledgling jewelry design enterprise about 1 1/2 years ago. They work at night, fashioning necklaces, rings and bracelets from rough-cut stones, strings of pearls, hand-gilded ostrich eggs, chunks of coral and bits of mink.

Last year, Nelson made one piece, a burnished gunmetal and black pearl necklace, as a birthday present for a friend from college. It would be a gift that would keep on giving.

The friend, Carol Cutshall, is the costume designer for the CW Network’s “One Tree Hill.” It’s a 20-something melodrama, with frothy story lines, whipped through with fashion, romance and rock’n’roll.

Starring Sophia Bush as Brooke Davis, a fashion designer/party girl, the television show gets as much buzz for its characters’ wardrobes as for its fretful plot turns.

“Tree Hill is the kind of town where the hot guys are sweet, the mean girls make the best friends and your son can get kidnapped and chased down in a cornfield by a psycho nanny who’s after your husband,” wrote Denise Martin of the Los Angeles Times.

Cutshall, a Pineville, La., native and LSU and Tulane graduate, has been the show’s style maker for three years. She’s constantly shopping for its cast. When Nelson’s gift arrived in the mail, Cutshall admits she wore the necklace first and then brought it to Bush.

“Sophia was like ‘Wow, where did you get this? It’s incredible,’” Cutshall said.

“When I got that first necklace and saw the burnished metals, it was perfect for camera,” Cutshall continued. “Lots of jewelry is too reflective. And the muted tones and raw stones are so pretty.

“Sophia is really fun to dress. She looks great in clothes, and she loves to take risks. I knew she’d love it.”


Read the rest and see some pictures here: Jewelry by two local designers appears regularly on the CW Network’s ‘One Tree Hill’ | New Orleans Fashion – - NOLA.com.






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