Shaun Leane

Shaun Leane (born 8 July 1969) is a British jewellery designer best known for his sculptural pieces created for Alexander McQueen.

His eponymous jewellery brand is a four-time winner of the UK Jewellery Designer of the Year award.

Leane was born and raised in Finsbury Park, London, the only child to an Irish father and an English mother.

His father worked in construction and his mother, Diane as a mental health carer.

Leane attended St. Aidan’s Primary School in Finsbury Park, and then St Thomas More RC for secondary.

Leane left school aged 14 to work for his father’s construction firm.

At 15, a chance meeting with a career advisor preceded Leane enrolling in a youth training scheme for jewellery design at Kingsway Princeton College of Further Education in Clerkenwell.

The college course was metalwork, teaching sculpture and jewellery.

Leane completed the metalwork course at Princeton college and his work was noticed by a course instructor who recommended students for scholarships within the industry.

He started a seven-year apprenticeship with English Traditional Jewellery in Hatton Garden, where he became a classically trained goldsmith.

It was there that he undertook antique restorations of Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco jewellery.

In the English Traditional Jewellery workshop, Leane was mentored by Brian Joslin and Richard Bullock and learnt the disciplines of the craft, transitioning from copper to gold in six months.

Goldsmithing skills Leane learnt during his apprenticeship included making intricate, composite fastenings; complex setting techniques, such as invisible settings which hold square cut gems in place; and restoration of period pieces with acute attention to detail and focus on preserving their beauty from the back as well as front.

Leane also repaired and restored antique jewels for dealers at Grays Antiques in Mayfair, Bermondsey Square Market and other antique shops.

At 18 years old, Leane was making diamond tiaras for London’s prestigious houses, including Mappin & Webb, Garrard and Asprey.

His clients included the British royal family.

In 1992, a year after completing his apprenticeship, a friend introduced Leane to Alexander McQueen, who was then studying at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

The next year, McQueen asked Leane to create Victorian-style silver fob watch chains for his show, Highland Rape.

Leane had to teach himself new techniques to create the large finale pieces for McQueen's shows.

Leane was soon working on eight shows a year for McQueen and Givenchy.

His 1996 mouthpiece, titled Repression, was originally created for the 1997 McQueen Autumn-Winter collection, and chosen by Isabella Blow as part of a group of garments selected to represent fashions of 1997 in the Fashion Museum, Bath's Dress of the Year collection.

Leane worked with McQueen on a neckpiece, inspired by the neckpieces worn by the Ndebele women of South Africa, for McQueen's "It's a Jungle out There" collection in 1997.

It was worn by Björk on the cover of her 1997 album Homogenic.

His designs for McQueen went from small jewels in the early shows to larger and more avant-garde designs such as a spine skeleton corset for the Spring/Summer 1998 show Untitled.

In 1998, a buyer for Harvey Nichols approached Leane with a view to stocking his first collection.

This led to Leane putting together his first commercial collections, which used elements from his work for McQueen.

After creating that piece, McQueen asked Leane if he could create a similar piece to fit the entire torso, and for McQueen's Autumn/Winter 1999 catwalk show, The Overlook, Leane created the Coiled Corset, a form-encasing bodice created from coils of aluminum.

Artist Kees van der Graaf created a concrete cast of the body of model Laura Morgan, around which Leane created a metal corset.

Leane has called the piece his highlight in working with McQueen, and his most challenging project.

He spent 16 hours a day for 10 weeks creating it.

In 1999, Leane founded Shaun Leane Jewellery, a company producing jewellery collections alongside his large-scale fashion pieces, combining traditional craftsmanship with modern design and computer-aided design techniques.

Sotheby's described his jewellery as "antiques of the future."

Leane's designs are sold online and at retailers in Britain, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

Leane has worked with Givenchy, Boucheron, De Beers, Bacardi and Clé de Peau Beauté.

For the Spring/Summer 2000 show, Eye, Leane created a yashmak made from chainmail.

For the 2001 Autumn/Winter show What a Merry Go Round, Leane taught himself taxidermy to create earrings of pheasant claws clutching Tahitian pearls.

Later, Leane created star and moon headdresses for the Autumn/Winter 2007 show, In Memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692, inspired by antique vintage Victorian brooches but designed to be worn as headdresses.

Leane and McQueen worked together until McQueen's death in 2010.

Leane gave an address at the memorial service for McQueen on 20 September 2010.

A selection of over 30 pieces Leane created with McQueen were featured in the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2011, later restaged at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015.