The celebrity jeweler game can be a crowded one, but New York-based designer Alex Moss has stood apart from the pack by creating pieces that are eye-catching (A$AP Rocky’s $322,000 GRIM belt buckle), highly unique (Tyler, The Creators’s $500,000 bellhop chain & pendant), and widely talked about (Drake’s $12.5 million chain that he implied was made up of diamonds from past engagements that he reconsidered). Alex is also expected to release a second public collection, exclusively at Maxfield in Los Angeles.
Recently Alex’s work has been catching eyes all summer via Hailey Bieber, who’s been sporting an eye-popping ‘B’ initial pendant that Justin commissioned and created for her with Moss. Hailey has rarely taken it off since—and now she’s doubled down on Moss’s collaboration with the Bieber family by returning the favor, and working with Moss on a surprise gift for Justin on the occasion of their fifth anniversary.
“I’m not surprised she wanted to work with us again,” Moss says. “I feel like once you have an experience with us, where else can you go from here?”
With Hailey’s input, Moss created a one-of-one custom mushroom pendant set for Hailey and Justin which features a plethora of diamonds and gems including five stones on top, which represents the five years they’ve been married.
Moss provided GQ with exclusive images of the pendant, and talked about what it’s like helping the Biebers ice each other out.
Alex Moss: So Hailey first reached out to do this bubble letter B pendant, and it became an iconic piece— to give credit to her for it, she’s the one that made it cool.
I’m not going to take credit for that, she had the idea and I just brought it to life. The B pendant, that was totally her vision for sure.
Yeah, and she has good taste, and she has good design intuition. At first we were trying to brainstorm together on what to make, whether it was going to be another initial pendant or something. She was the one who suggested we create [mushroom pendants], something along these lines. And then, of course, I put my twist to it, and I designed the actual mushroom. Hailey specifically wanted the mushroom to be in that bubble style. When you have two people with good taste, you can’t lose.
I showed [Hailey] some different color options and then she liked the multicolor option that I went with. And then she also suggested we do a yellow gold one to match the set.
You have to ask Hailey, this is her idea.
I didn’t know this at the time—I think she mentioned it, but maybe it went over my head—but this is their fifth anniversary, and the mushrooms have dots on them. There are five dots, five big stones on the mushroom, I guess that represents the fifth anniversary because there’s five of them on each mushroom. So that adds a little more of a sentimental value to it.
Just from our own Alex Moss, New York bank. We have all our own diamonds. But I’ll say this about the diamonds— the stones that were used in this piece were the absolute highest quality, they’re all D color VVS top, and nothing else exists on the planet better than them… this is the top.
Priceless, to be honest. To get an anniversary gift from Alex Moss, New York, custom designed— you can’t put a price on that. It’s a Bieber project.
I didn’t ship this piece to Hailey. I had a member of our team fly and hand deliver the piece to make sure that it was 100% there, that there was no chance it was going to get lost. So it’s like a top-to-bottom thing, once you work with us, it’s hard to beat the experience. Look how much she’s wearing the B pendant, she hasn’t taken it off.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Crazy, to be honest. But I’ve been a solid, honest, trustworthy person all my life, so whether it’s my best friend from when I was younger, or now it’s Rocky, Drake and Hailey Bieber, I’m used to being a trusted person. This is just Alex.
Honestly, whenever I do a gift for someone, it’s a little different because I’m not actually giving it to them myself. So I’m always waiting [on the reaction]: “What do you think? Do you like it? Do you like it?” I always think twice about that because I’m not giving it to them, and then they didn’t ask me for it. So it’s like, “Did we fuck up? Did we do a good job?”
But I’ll say in this case, if you go to look at his pictures on Instagram, he hasn’t taken the chain off.