Making the Invisible Visible: The Plastician
In a world where the loudest voices often get the most attention, those working behind the scenes in fashion, art, music, tech, and culture can remain unseen. "Making the Invisible Visible" brings their stories to the forefront. This series highlights niche creatives whose contributions shape our culture yet often go unrecognized. It’s about giving these unsung heroes their flowers, revealing the dedication behind their craft, and exploring why their impact is profound despite their relative invisibility. Through their stories, we celebrate the overlooked brilliance that keeps creativity alive.
Bryan Trésor/Laseve: Alizee Quitman
“It is a moment to not only give them their flowers but also glimpse the juxtaposition between their untiring commitment to their craft and why they’re often invisible despite their contributions.”
What if jewelry could be more than decoration—powerful enough to challenge tradition, tell stories, and redefine identity? Paris-based plastician artist and artisan Alizee Quitman answers that question with innovative work that reshapes how we think about jewelry and its purpose.
For much of my life, I saw jewelry through narrow lenses. Women’s pieces symbolized delicate beauty, elegance, and royalty, while men’s jewelry seemed bold, raw, and exaggerated, tied to strength and hip-hop culture. These stereotypes confined my understanding of jewelry to rigid categories. Then, I discovered Alizee’s work, and everything changed. Her bold, process-driven approach transforms jewelry into unapologetic wearable art, seamlessly weaving opposing forces—delicacy and rawness, elegance and disruption. Rooted in her Caribbean heritage, Afrofuturistic aesthetics, and commitment to sustainability, her pieces evoke protection, power, and resilience. They feel like armor for the soul, blurring the lines between tradition and innovation. Alizee doesn’t just create jewelry; she makes statements. Unique objectives of affection. Her work challenges conventional notions of accessories, expanding their possibilities and showing that jewelry can be a transformative extension of identity. For Making the Invisible Visible, she is the perfect muse—an artist who disrupts norms, reimagines craft, and amplifies overlooked stories.
Her journey began at La Cambre, the prestigious art school in Brussels, where she spent eight years honing her interdisciplinary skills in two- and three-dimensional practices. A workshop in Antwerp ignited her passion for metal casting. There, she learned to melt tin with camping stoves and mold pewter into shapes that defied tradition. This hands-on experimentation sparked her fascination with reimagining utilitarian objects, like modern cutlery, as symbols of empowerment. Today, her studio reflects this blend of history and innovation. She scours local markets for discarded tinware, giving overlooked materials new life. Through upcycling, she creates accessories imbued with narratives of resilience, sustainability, and cultural significance. Each piece honors the past while imagining bold futures, bridging history and possibility.
Alizee’s designs are unapologetically bold, straddling the line between weaponry and wearable art. Influenced by military aesthetics, BDSM, and digital-age technology, her pieces envelop the body like exoskeletons—structures that protect and provoke. These designs challenge traditional femininity, redefining it as powerful, dangerous, and assertive. She credits much of this ethos to her grandmother, whose strength inspires the “chic, powerful, dangerous woman” Alizee envisions through her work. Her ongoing collaboration with Marine Serre, a leader in upcycled fashion, further amplifies her ability to merge sustainability with avant-garde design, crafting pieces that elevate everyday materials into symbols of empowerment.
I met Alizee over a decade ago, drawn to her electric-red Kangol furgora cap cutting through the grey London clouds. I approached her for my blog, Hatabouttown, and we immediately connected over personal style, craft, and creativity. Over the years, I’ve watched her evolve as an artist, her relentless curiosity and adaptability shining through in everything she does—from melting metals in makeshift setups to navigating creative challenges with determination shaped by her background in sports. Even her impatience, as she calls it, fuels her drive to push boundaries. Recently, I’ve seen her make waves in the U.S., collaborating during NYFW and shooting in Los Angeles and Mexico. She returned to Paris with the same energy, hosting workshops and completing a social campaign with i-D Magazine. Despite the distance, we continue to inspire each other, exchanging ideas and discoveries.
At the core of Alizee’s work is a profound interrogation of technology and its role in reshaping the human body. Steeped in Afrofuturism and speculative fiction, her pieces imagine augmented bodies and new forms of strength. They connect the past with the future, transforming materials and stories into something extraordinary. Her philosophy mirrors the mission of Making the Invisible Visible: to illuminate hidden potential and redefine beauty by reclaiming discarded materials, overlooked traditions, and underrepresented narratives, crafting bold expressions of resilience and innovation. Alizee Quitman’s work redefines jewelry as more than accessories—it is expression, protection, and power. Her creations remind us that even the discarded can carry untold futures. What stories will you reclaim and reimagine?
