Emerging West Australian jewellery designer, Karen-Patricia Thompson, enrolled in the Diploma of Jewellery Design & Production course at Central TAFE in 2002. Since then she has received several awards for her art jewellery work (the first while still a student) and two funding grants from the Dept of Culture and the Arts to expand her label Audrey says Hello! Thompson launched her first collection of silver jewellery in September 2008 when she was chosen as a finalist in the “FashionExposed” trade fair’s competition for budding designers called “DEBUT”.

Audrey says Hello! jewellery is constructed from sterling silver which gives it a luxurious quality you can see and feel in the finish. Silver is a precious metal and like gold it can be recycled. Its colour has an ethereal quality that adds a contemporary yet timeless style when worn as jewellery. It also provides a stunning back drop for the punctuations of colour provided by the resin inlay, crystal, coral, texture or the occasional feather used in the designs. Many of the designs are made by Karen herself in limited editions of up to 10.

Karen outsources part of the manufacturing to a factory in East Java, Indonesia which is close to the site of the 2006 Lapindo Brantos  gas mining disaster which resulted in a torrent of boiling water, mud and gas flooding the nearby region which is still severely affecting the local people and their economy. The disaster has affected the region’s chances of attracting much needed foreign investment. Karen personally visited the factory she later chose to manufacture Audrey Says Hello! jewellery components to insure that it provides a high standard of safe, ethical working conditions for its employees.

Asked what inspires her, she says that she was strongly influenced by modernist jewellery design as a student, especially the Scandinavian designers associated with the silversmith firm Georg Jensen like Henning Koppel, Nanna Ditzel and Vivianna Torun. While trying to follow in that tradition, her designs are highly stylised and as streamlined as possible while still paying homage to contemporary fashion.

How did the label’s name come about? Putting pressure on herself to come up with something original and memorable, Thompson was at a loss to think of a name she herself loved and felt connected to. Putting the onerous task on the back burner, she spent one very hot Perth summer’s day relaxing at home with her daughters Jennifer, Elizabeth and Cara.  While reading the novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, two of the girls were watching Audrey Tautou in the movie “Amelie” and the other was listening to a CD by “The Audreys”. It occurred to her that everything going on in the house at that point in time involved Audreys. Feeling “inspired”, she went to her computer and googled the name Audrey. The first thing to pop up was a Youtube message titled “Audrey Says Hello!” and felt that would be the perfect name for her label!