LeSter engagement collection “Meant to Be”

When it came to designing my first engagement collection, I started with the question: “well, what is love?”

Aishleen Lester - Founder of Le Ster (https://le-ster.com)

Photographed by our LGBTQ+ photographer Ross Willsher

I have long been an admirer of Ross’s photographs and the way he works with his clients. It's informal, he makes people feel at ease so that he can capture the unposed dynamic of a couple. Those precious moments, when your partner makes you laugh, or when they look at you and you know that they love you, those moments that are difficult to stage but can be captured when a couple is allowed to be themselves in front of a camera.

Seeing the fluidity and naturalness of his photographs I knew I wanted to collaborate with him on the imagery for the “Meant to Be” collection. Kim and Mirabel were the second couple we worked with, the location of the Southbank at golden hour. No filters, no posing but at ease. Ross can bring to life the tenderness and fun that is “Kim and Mirabel.”

When it came to designing my first engagement collection, I started with the question:

“well, what is love?”

Honestly, I had no clue how to express it. Love can be a messy emotion, difficult to pin down – it swirls around, dimming and growing and yet you know when it is there. It is allusive. Through the process of making a massive number of prototypes out of paper, plasticine, copper sheet and milliput which did not feel right. I realised that love is not something to be defined and put in a box but more an energy that cannot be forced, and one with its own momentum and significant connection to fate. My job is to realise that sense of potential movement and life through form.

A continuous flowing line of gold gently wraps around a perfectly-cut diamond. Their forms become one, giving the illusion that stone and metal, just like the couple it celebrates, are Meant to Be.