Samantha Wasserman has recently been named Public Relations Director at Alexis Bittar. She was previously the Fashion & Events PR Manager at Shecky’s Media.
About Alexis Bittar
Alexis Bittar launched his eponymous jewelry collections in the early ’90s, but the Brooklyn native’s artistic flair was evident long before then. As a child, Bittar accompanied his parents to flea markets, where they collected and sold antiques. At the tender age of 10, Bittar showed his entrepreneurial spirit by selling flowers from a hand-painted cart across the street from his house.
Fueled by his passion for antiques, including Art Deco Bakelite and turn-of-the-century Lalique glass, Bittar began designing Lucite and semi-precious jewelry and selling it on the streets of Soho in the early 1990s. Bittar’s bold designs quickly caught the eye of buyers from the Guggenheim Museum store and Henri Bendel, and he also developed strong relationships with the Museum of Modern Art and Saks Fifth Avenue. Today, Alexis Bittar jewelry is sold at hundreds of department stores and independent boutiques worldwide.
In 2004, Bittar opened his first flagship in New York’s Soho. The store’s design pays homage to two distinct aesthetics: modernism and Victorian. This translates into a Plexiglass wall, iridescent white spray-painted Victorian lion’s claw table and turn-of-the-century wallpaper – all of which serve as an ideal backdrop for Bittar’s whimsical Lucite and exquisite semi-precious pieces.
Over the years, Bittar has expanded his design repertoire to include furniture, home décor and for spring 2006, belts. In 2000, Burberry tapped him to design a limited-edition collection of Lucite bracelets, chokers and pins in the brand’s signature plaid.
Bittar’s jewelry is regularly featured in premier publications such as W, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, The New York Times and Italian Vogue. Bittar’s pieces are coveted by a discerning clientele, including Madonna, Karl Lagerfeld, Cameron Diaz and Naomi Watts. The jeweler won the Accessories Council’s “Rising Star” award in 2004 and became a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2005.
