Mom and Mignon
A contemplation of collections
The collectability of Mignon Faget’s jewelry designs in Central Louisiana from 2006 to 2014 made for an impressive display at my mother Mira’s Alexandria shop, MA Designs. Mom placed Mignon’s designs in three custom jewelry cabinets built by craftsman Glen Armand. They were tall and painted pale blue and unlocked with an ornate key. An enormous electrified curly willow chandelier from Urban Earth Studios in New Orleans evoked a cool grove, a quiet and gentle space for browsing and trying on Mignon.
Customers could strike out beyond the cabinets, around and about the displays Mom devoted to artists she loved, such as tabletop designers Moutet, Annieglass, Mottahedeh, and Abigails, jewelers DeFarro, Barbara Conner, and Konstantino, and glass artists and sculptors from the Penland School of Craft.
Her customers could depend on Mom’s enthusiasm for the latest trends. She loved introducing beautiful designs and crossed her showroom floor with the same thrill she exhibited while hiking the summit of her favorite trail in the Great Smoky Mountains.
On day trips to New Orleans and summer vacations we visited artist studios and selected inventory, often with particular customers in mind. On slow days at the shop I read David Sedaris essays aloud to her.
I knew well the joy Mom took from seeing her customers, many of them lifelong friends. I helped out with sales and wrapping gifts in teal paper with bronze lettering and Midori satin ribbon. On day trips to New Orleans and summer vacations we visited artist studios and selected inventory, often with particular customers in mind. On slow days at the shop I read David Sedaris essays aloud to her.
With ease, Mom could imagine a customer’s life. She sold a dress from the FLAX line in this way, saying, “It can be your Saturday morning dress,”—an indirect description, embracing what it is but also what it represents to the wearer. A customer’s story was in the middle of everything for Mom, pulling all of her interests, intuition, and priorities together.
"Rather than a particular moment that had lifelong influence on her eye, I’m more inclined to believe that Mom’s instinct for putting a look together came naturally. It was an assumed part of who she was, and she possessed an easy self-awareness about her fashion sense."
A question Mom never answered directly, because such an answer isn’t really possible, concerns how she developed an interest in fashion. If her mother ever wore jewelry, it was usually for a special gathering of family or Sunday church services. For Mom, an early influence may have been her best friend while growing up in the 1950s and 1960s—the daughter of Gus Kaplan, who would operate his fashion department store in Alexandria from 1967 to 1997. Rather than a particular moment that had lifelong influence on her eye, I’m more inclined to believe that Mom’s instinct for putting a look together came naturally. It was an assumed part of who she was, and she possessed an easy self-awareness about her fashion sense. For example, she didn’t wear hats except to go fishing. “My hair is my hat,” she’d say.
Two successful businesswomen held the Central Louisiana Mignon Faget account before Mom did—first Nancy Young, whose boutique in the 1980s was the go-to for ribbon belts, headbands, and monogrammed stationery and Bermuda Bags; and then Abigail Voelker, who in the 1990s hired Mom as manager and assistant buyer for her family’s Italian import business, The Odyssey Shop, which specialized in DeSimone pottery. Mom enjoyed these strong influences from within her community, examples of how one could reinvent and reclaim the identity of the female position in society. Mignon Faget, too, served as this kind of influence.
Mignon attributes her philosophies of design to her undergraduate education at Newcomb College in New Orleans, where she was given the freedom to explore and discover the kind of artist she wanted to be. She enrolled at Newcomb during a notable era of evolution for the art school. Since the late 1800s Newcomb Pottery had enjoyed critical acclaim for productions with natural motifs, featuring regional flora and fauna such as iris, cypress trees, and Live Oaks. The closure of Newcomb Pottery in 1939 signaled the art school’s move away from the promotion of its core tenet, the idea that women could gain financial independence through developing a craft. The professor who would become one of Mignon’s major influences, the school’s Director Robert Durant “Robin” Feild, then steered Newcomb to focus on film and other art forms. As a result, Mignon’s 1955 Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a major in metalwork upheld different artistic ideals. Yet, as artist Robert Tannen observed in his introduction for Mignon’s 1986 exhibit An Enquiring Eye, her longstanding career carries forward the economic objective of an earlier Newcomb.
That Mignon’s artistry and prolific work ethic combine with her business acumen to appeal to collectors was apparent to anybody who shopped with Mom. With more than seventy jewelry series—as well as designs for the home—in Mignon’s oeuvre, every personal collection is unique; collectors would have to coordinate their acquisitions in order to possess the same pieces. Mignon’s offer of choice cultivates loyalty to her brand.
She has built her brand by successfully communicating a particular philosophy of collecting—to embody the natural world paradoxically by wearing its forms, cast in silver and gold. Notably, her three-fold design process begins with creating a collection of objects—sea shells, for example, which are nestled between books in her library of art and design titles: Urformen der Kunst (Art forms in nature) (1928) by Karl Blossfeldt, The Creation of Sculpture by Jules Struppeck (1952), and Flowers by Irving Penn (1980), to name a few. Distillation of images follows as the second step, and the third and final step is the creation of new forms, such as pendants, rings, and bracelets. The result is a context of design that is immediately communicated to collectors who pore over the varying shapes, textures, and sizes.
"Collectors of Mignon understand what they want others to see and what they don’t. The secret space of adornment is the self that is out of view."
Generally speaking, amassing a collection begins with the fundamental idea that a sense of self may be understood in the past, present, and future; the symbolic power of an object evolves with its collector. Collectors of Mignon understand what they want others to see and what they don’t. The secret space of adornment is the self that is out of view.
My dad, brother, and I lived in denial of Mom’s struggles with dementia until Mignon’s wholesale director explained it to us with an example: Mom called headquarters on Magazine Street several times a day to place the same order, over and over again, for Tiger, Tiger Glasses.
During the early days of her store closing sale, Mom told her customers, “It’s not my fault.” The news of her diagnosis hadn’t traveled far enough to reach all who knew her, so some wanted to know what lay behind her decision to close.
To explain the end of her professional life by denying culpability was so like her. However unpleasant a moment might become, she could appreciate it, even enjoy it, for its karma. Maybe dementia skewed the idea she had wished to convey to her customers, which might have been that it wasn’t her decision to close the shop. Or maybe not. Dementia certainly was not her fault.
"She loved hearing about the adored one who would be adorned, or about the milestone a design was purchased to commemorate."
The role Mom’s shop played in the personal narrative of her customers was no small part of its value. She loved hearing about the adored one who would be adorned, or about the milestone a design was purchased to commemorate. At Mom’s memorial service in March of this year, we acknowledged a contemplation of choice as present and powerful in her life. This must have been part of the reason, or maybe the main one, that Mignon’s designs spoke to her.
Nolde Alexius is the curator of The Collectible Life of Mignon Faget, on display at West Baton Rouge Museum through January 3, 2021. The exhibit features more than eighty jewelry designs from personal collections and twenty-seven representative series Faget created between 1970 and 2019.