50 Trees Leaf
Love Heals is one of those companies that you just want to succeed. Perhaps its because every single piece of Love Heals jewelry purchased protects a child from blindness for one year; saves another child from slavery for one month and plants 10 trees. In terms of doing good while doing business, it doesn’t get much better than Love Heals.
Case in point, with the 2009 holiday season, Love Heals has stepped up their amazing concept. Their holiday collection, Love Does Heal features three themes of jewelry set up as series, the 50 Trees series, the Vision series and the Freedom series. With the purchase of one piece of jewelry from the 50 Trees series, Love Heals plants 50 fruit trees in Ethiopia through Greener Ethiopia. A holiday jewelry purchase from the Vision series keeps five children from blindness for life through Vitamin Angels. For every piece of jewelry sold from the Freedom series, a child is rescued from slavery through Abolish Slavery. Love Heals jewelry is truly a gift that just keeps on giving.
50 Trees Sturdy
Love Heals jewelry is the brainchild of founder Adriana Goddard and her son Gunnar Lovelace. These original works of jeweled art are designed and crafted by hand in a geodesic studio dome on the family’s organic farm in Southern California.
A communal environment that is, at its core, sustainable and organic, Love Heals actually began as a company in 2005 when Goddard’s son, Gunnar Lovelace partnered with his mother. Adriana had always designed jewelry and while helping sell her jewelry at a flea market on Mother’s Day in 2004, Lovelace saw the emotional reaction that women had to Adriana’s jewelry and how powerfully it touched their lives. For over two decades, Lovelace was a successful business developer, designed jewelry and wrote highly acclaimed software programs including one designed to teach children to read.
Adriana
As Love Heals president, Lovelace focuses on developing collaborations with social causes that best represent their mission for Love Heals. Lovelace coordinates their environmental tree-planting partnerships as well as those with the child anti-slavery and child anti-blindness organizations that are such a major component of the Love Heals business model. Adriana’s daughter Elisa Perez also works and lives the Love Heals lifestyle as vice president of sales.
Although it may seem as if her jewelry business just took off in 2005, the fact is Goddard has been working towards this all of her life. Growing up in Buenos Aires, Goddard’s parents were avid 18th century antique collectors. Goddard fled Argentina’s harsh military dictatorship as a young woman and settled in London where she began making and selling jewelry for a living. Goddard was able to transfer her jewelry making talents to many different continents during years of travel and living abroad, settling for a time on the Spanish island of Ibiza where Gunnar was born. After several years there, Goddard packed it up and crossed the ocean to California, eventually landing in Ojai where Love Heals is headquartered.
Freedom Deliverance
In understanding Goddard’s background, one begins to grasp where the inspiration for the unique look of Love Heals originates. During her travels, Goddard collects impressions and interesting pieces to integrate into her designs. Created exclusively using ethically sourced materials, every piece of Love Heals jewelry is embellished with good intentions as well as charms discovered in flea markets and antique shops in all corners of the world.
One of Goddard’s travel stories gives an idea of the experiences that contribute to the original design of each piece of Love Heals’ jewelry. According to Goddard, “I was hanging out in Chiang Mai in Thailand and befriended an American who traded in sacred Buddhist artifacts,” Goddard said. “Early one morning, he took me to a swap meet in which traders from Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand were doing their thing. We were the only foreigners. It was a total thrill.”
Freedom Wings
Love Heals jewelry is anything but traditional yet it has classic primordial undertones that speak to different types of people in their own inner language. Goddard describes the Love Heals jewelry line this way, “We have a vast product range which goes from delicate, devotional pieces to powerful talismanic statements, sweeping by sophisticated concepts to romantic bridal elements.”
Goddard sees the woman who wears Love Heals as having an active and spiritual life while surrounding herself with meaningful, personal objects.
“My jewelry is born of a deep human familiarity with all of the beautiful quirks and aspirations humans hold,” Goddard said.
Goddard’s favorite thing about Love Heals is…all of it. From the jewelry design to the charitable works, all of it serves to put Goddard in a special place in her life, as is obvious in her joyful description of her “favorite things about her work.”
LH Jewelry
“My heart sings when I am designing, carving waxes, finding artists to cooperate with, sourcing materials and delving into the history of jewelry and art,” Goddard said.
For those who want to emulate Goddard by following their dreams into design, Goddard offers these jewels of wisdom, “… for any designer, view curiosity as one of your main allies. Be curious about yourselves, the world around you, the history of jewelry…Be faithful to your own interests,” Goddard said. “Find causes you would like to be affiliated with and support them.”
Goddard, optimistically yet realistically envisions industry wide changes across the board towards sustainability in jewelry design, fashion and lifestyle, “I would like to see much, much more recycled material and really responsible sourcing of all the materials,” Goddard said. “I think the public should ask for carefully sourced materials. That the gemstones are mined and handled in a conscious way.”
Vision Lotus
As for future plans at Love Heals, Goddard’s focus is clear, “To do more work directly involved with the different causes we love to support and to make that the gist of our business,” Goddard said.
Based on the level of support that Love Heals already commits to, that statement is quite telling. Consider the success of Love Heals’ charitable work within their business model. In their first year, Love Heals planted over 250,000 trees in Africa and the United States. Currently the total number of trees planted is 320,000.
So when you buy a piece of jewelry from Love Heals, your dollars go to work to help others. Hence their tag line for their new collection, Love Does Heal.
Momand Son
In southern California, Love Heals can be found in luxury retail locations like Fred Segal, Calypso, and Planet Blue.
For more information on Love Heals jewelry as well as their work with charitable organizations, go to,www.loveheals.com, www.abolishslavery.org/video, www.vitaminangels.org and www.greenerethiopia.org.
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