I quit my job as a family therapist because of a low-cut blouse.

My boss had opinions about it. I was tired of being told how to dress, what I was worth, and how to spend my time. So I left, and I moved to Thailand for a year.

I came by it honestly. My mom left for Europe on her 21st birthday and stayed nine years. Her message never changed: do what makes you happy, answer to no one, and for God's sake, travel. It wasn't the advice that got me. It was watching her live it. She forged her own path, and that became the soul of Filosophy.

That was 2009. What followed was fourteen years of moving between Thailand, Argentina, Peru, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil. I spent them around people who made things by hand, watching how they worked and figuring out what I did and didn't want. Winters abroad. Summers on the festival circuit. Those years built my eye. They hadn't yet put the work in my hands.

I opened my studio in October 2024. Since then every Filosophy necklace, pair of earrings and bracelet has been made there, at my own bench: choosing stones, cutting and reworking chain, wire wrapping, beading, oxidizing metal, welding jump rings closed, assembling and finishing.

What I got back was everything I'd been missing. I choose the stones now. Any color, any shape, any cut I can find.

The stones are the star. I look for unusual color and character rather than uniformity, then build the piece around what the stone gives me. Sometimes an everyday necklace. Sometimes the piece you put on when you want to be seen.

A single jasper might hold green, yellow, brown, cream, teal and orange all at once. That's paint on a palette. The piece is the canvas. The art is in what you do with it. Graduating the color, or putting it with something unexpected, is what makes handmade special. It's not the most cost effective, but nothing good ever was.