I'm lucky that Dean Davidson is so nice. I'm on strike two. Twice I have completely butchered my side of our interactions. The first time, I heard about Dean was at the Holt Renfrew Designer Appearances during fashion week. I introduced myself to Jeremy Laing's father thinking it was Dean. God, that was horrible. The second time was when I wrote the follow up piece to the designer appearances. I used David instead of Dean as his first name in the article. D'oh! Thank god I got the captions in the images right.

So, I tempted fate and attended his Spring 2008 preview event at Holt's Cafe. The event brought out a lot of the television media which was pleasantly surprising. I'm glad to see shows like ET Canada, StarTV and Fashion Television feature more Canadian design talent. Of course the magazine editors were in attendance. I didn't notice any other bloggers. I think Dean creates some beautiful and unique pieces of jewelery for an excellent price; this stuff is all handmade.

The event was attended by VIP customers and staff from the Jewelry department at Holt's. Customers had the opportunity to pre-order from the spring 2008 collection before it hits the stores in the middle of March. I even saw some Men in the crowd looking at pieces for their significant others. That's right, straight Men. I was pleasantly surprised by this.

Dean was running around tending house but I managed to snag a few minutes to chat. He's a super personable person and I'm glad we can laugh at my lapses in judgment. The spring 2008 collection is called Rain. This plays into the underlying theme all his collections have in common, freedom. The fluidity of water and it's free flowing nature plays into this nicely. The jewelry conveys the message of Rain and water through teardrop shapes and sterling silver. Aquamarine, ocean blue chalcedony and crystal quartz are the stones that complete the look. Dean also uses gold and green chalcedony give added breadth to the collection.

Some of the silver and gold pieces have a brushed metal treatment adding a dimension of texture to the jewelry which complements the smoothness of the stones. The beautiful shades of blue and green in the chalcedony reminds me of the sea off the west coast of Barbados.

Hoops are a staple you can find throughout all Dean's collections. They enclose drop earrings or make up layers of a bracelet. I don't remember rings being a large focus in the fall collection, but he's created a few different styles for spring. The brushed metal domed ring in silver being my favourite and the crystal quartz teardrop ring in silver coming in a close second. The triple teardrop earrings are kinda nice too. Prices range from $85 - 400.

There were many stylish people at the event and I'm obsessed with bright blue tights and black.

Additional photos can be found on my flickr account.

First 6 photos courtesy of ASC. Last 3 photos Anita Clarke.