Liberté & Liberty

Before she was an icon, she was a workshop. In Paris, at Gaget, Gauthier & Co., dozens of craftsmen spent years shaping her in repoussé — hammering copper sheets barely thicker than a coin while Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi refined every fold. The tablet in her hand still carries the date that started it all: July 4, 1776.

Paris saw her face before New York ever did. In 1878, her completed head rose above the Exposition Universelle on timber scaffolding, while workers in caps and frock-coated crowds gathered below. Liberty did not arrive finished — she was built in public, piece by piece, until the world believed in her.

On July 4, 1884 — one hundred and eight years after the Declaration — France presented the finished statue to the United States in Paris. Gustave Eiffel had engineered the iron skeleton within; Bartholdi had shaped the copper skin without. Then she was dismantled, packed into 214 crates, and sent across the Atlantic.

She was dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886 — La Liberté éclairant le monde, a gift from France to America. A century later, in 1986, her torch was restored in 24-karat gold leaf so the flame could catch the sun again. That light is what this collection holds: elegance with conviction, worn close by anyone who knows freedom was never won alone.