Cecilia Östman is an independent designer operating and designing the Cecilia Östman Jewellery collection. All the pieces are handmade, currently for sale online at www.ceciliaostman.etsy.com. The products include handmade necklaces, bracelets and earrings, featuring mostly semi precious stones, but also glass and plastic, with brass findings. The hope is that in the future the collection will grow to include clothing and other fashion accessories. Our mission is simple: to design and produce fashion items that are affordable, fun and feminine.

Cecilia Östman was born in Sweden, but spent her childhood moving around; living in many different places around the world, including France, Kenya and Uganda.

Leaving her family behind in Africa, Cecilia moved to Canada to study classical Ballet at age thirteen. After graduating from the National Ballet School in Toronto, Cecilia quickly realized that her true love was not actually dance but design. In fact without realizing it, Cecilia had been a designer all her life; always making clothing, jewelry, bags, and everything else imaginable in her spare time.

Cecilia started her career in fashion at the Paris Fashion Institute in Paris, which led to an internship at Gianfranco Lotti in Florence. She then moved to New York to study fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. After graduating from FIT Cecilia began working as a sleepwear designer in New York.

Cecilia is now based in London, operating and designing her jewellery collection in a sunny Victorian townhouse she shares with her mother and her younger sister.

When I first started making jewellery it was just for my own amusement. If it were not for my sisters, it would have simply remained a pastime. Without premeditation, however, this has became a project that has involved all three of us sisters, and the path of this collection has been directly navigated by our lives.

My younger sister Annika encouraged me to take the first steps towards selling the jewellery to friends. Then, at home in Sweden for family vacation, with several necklaces in tow, we staged a photo shoot with our older sister Helena as our model. It was a magical day, completely without planning. The photos captured the essence of what we wanted to achieve in an almost effortless way, and Helena became the definitive face of this collection.

A few weeks later, in the fall of 2009, Annika and I staged a second photo shoot in New York. There, in a public park, we received the phone call that changed our lives forever. Helena, at 29 years old, had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer.

I immediately left my design job in New York and went to Europe to be with Helena while she received treatment. During this time, I did what I could for Helena: I entertained her, I tried to stay in good spirits, I cooked and baked, and with a new sense of purpose I worked on my jewellery. Helena was eager for the Collection to be successful. She got involved creatively; she invested money, and the prospect of success kept her spirits up.

In the spring of 2010 Annika had the idea to make a necklace with a portion of the profits benefiting Pancreatic Cancer Research. It was a small thing, but we wanted to do something in the face of the illness that was taking its toll on our sister. I posted the news on my website on June 11th, when Helena was in the hospital. She passed away exactly one week later.

The loss of Helena is something we will never quite comprehend, but we are determined to make this collection as if she was still with us. We know her so well, that we can almost feel what she would say, what she would want, what she would think. She was an extraordinary person and we hope that one day our collection will mature to her likeness; to be graceful, feminine, bright, smart, and with a great sense of purpose.