If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to go into a mosh pit and haven’t had the gumption to do so, then know that the feeling is somewhat akin to wearing a piece of jewellery by the British designer, Hannah Martin. Euphoric, cathartic, vibrant, unforgettable. It’s one of life’s few spaces where you’re able to feel all the feels, and it’s that position of emotional rawness that Martin has infused into a line-up of 26 jewels that form The Perfect Drug Collection.

The tenth collection since Martin launched her namesake brand in 2006, precious metals and diamonds are a means to signify a greater bodily experience: the rejection of a world numbed by distraction. This is not so much a case of adding a ring to your finger or placing a metallic talisman around the neck to accessorise yourself, but a greater anthropological rebellion. Emblematic of emotive armour to dress the body, Martin’s approach provokes the senses, much like that of the mosh pit, to remind its wearer to embrace emotion. To wear it is to feel and to acknowledge that each delicate object breaks the monotony of a life lived in monochrome.

Martin’s relationship with jewellery as a symbol of something more is a sensation she fell into spontaneously. An impromptu jewellery class on her foundation year at London’s hallmark institution of greatness, Central Saint Martins, led to an internship with the world’s leading jeweller, Cartier. Fixated by the mechanical scents of the workshop, the practicality of using her hands to create (something she’d harnessed from an early age deconstructing toilet rolls into the magical creations of childhood) and the curiosity of what luxury could look like led her to carve her own pathway in 2006. While the spectacle of Place Vendome and the job at the French Maison presented itself, Martin couldn’t help but question her relationship with high jewellery and its audience.

“I was working in Paris at night, going to watch pretty French boys play rock and roll music. I asked myself: how can I make these two worlds meet?” Harnessing her spirit of rebellion – raised during the UK’s zenith of punk anarchy – Martin wanted to map the rarefied world of her haute joaillerie studies and create something she’d want to place on her own body. Provoking questions around gender, and the binaries often constructed in jewellery, Martin figured that if she couldn’t find something to suit her, she just better make it herself.

Now marking her tenth collection, we caught up with Martin to discover the overlooked role of jewellery in our daily lives, and how curiosity transpired into building her own brand.

Scarlett: Hannah, we’re meeting at the moment you’re about to deliver your tenth collection to the world, and it’s only right that you’re decorated in all of your pieces. Is this your uniform for every day?

Hannah Martin: Absolutely. Without it, I feel naked and vulnerable. If I leave the house withut my rings, I have to go back and get them. It’s not even an outward-facing feeling about appearance, it’s just like getting dressed.

SB: If only there were a world where we had more fingers to wear more rings.

HM: It’s not fair, is it? There’s not enough real estate to play with here.

SB: Can you remember your first piece of jewellery that you ever had when you were younger?

HM: Jewellery didn’t really exist in my remit, it wasn’t something my family had. So I think my first piece was probably a shit dagger earring from Camden market.

SB: Did it tarnish two days later?

HM: Green fingers, absolutely.

SB: We all start somewhere. Today marks the launch of your new collection, The Perfect Drug, a collection, much like the rest of your work, is tethered to a specific emotion. With this launch, we’re looking at feelings of connectivity and heartbreak, but is it important for you to draw upon such complicated emotions in what you do?

HM: I think it’s to do with how I’m evolving as a human. Every year that goes by, you become more aware of yourself, how you work, and your place in the world. My emotional intelligence has improved and it’s that intensity of emotion that really sums up The Perfect Drug: complex emotions as the thing that makes us human. When it comes to narrating the feeling of heartbreak, I realised that I had to get to 40 years old and not actually experience it to the intensity that I thought I could have. There’s a lot of physicality to that emotion, knowing that if the pain didn’t exist, the joy wouldn’t exist.

SB: Has the process been a cathartic journey since you began in 2006?

HM: I think that’s the only way I understand how to work. But even then, if people are interested in the story, they’re interested, but sometimes you can just see a piece of jewellery and love it and want to care for it without needing to know my story. I think the other thing that kind of really became clear to me through this process of making this collection was how the world is a hard place to live in. There’s so much like horror going on at the minute. There’s also just so much we take in, visually, in terms of information that overwhelms us on a daily basis, which encourages us to numb ourselves. The question I was asking with the collection is that maybe the biggest rebellion that we can have right now is feeling. Really feeling and letting go, rather than have others tell us how we should feel.

SB: The collection is pitched as objects that savour the senses. What do you mean by that?

HM: It’s about the idea of connecting to yourself, rather than the world around you and waking up the senses. We’re overwhelmed by connection, but there are some connections that are really glorious, like in a mosh pit. The whole seed of this collection came to me during a mosh put at a Nine Inch Nails concert; the idea of ultimate pain and join.

SB: How important do you think it is for designers to acknowledge or respond to the world around them? Or is it about creating something separate from that?

HM: I think there’s different kinds of reasons for things to exist in the world. It’s hard not to respond to the zeitgeist, particularly if you’re a self-aware person, but I think there’s something to be said for putting beautiful things out in the world.

SB: How does a new collection take shape? Is there a formula to it?

HM: I begin with initial research, but I know I go to the same stuff, which means I have to challenge myself not to look at the punk books first. I’m really strict with myself at the beginning. I sit in my office, staring at images, trying to empty my mind of everything. I don’t think about jewellery, and it’s almost meditative. It’s about trying not to think and going with the gut for a day or two, then I look at what I’ve got and assess it. It’s so intense and you have to make yourself so vulnerable and so open to receive whatever’s coming. You go through these places and extremes in a day. One hour is: “Oh my God, this is amazing,” to “Oh my God. I’m shit.” You let all of that be and in amongst all of that soup, there’s something great.