THE REAL BLING
How jewelry designer Samantha Wills became a secret celeb favorite
T was 2008 or 2009, and Samantha Wills was living in Australia, piecing together jewelry out of crystals and wires, when an assistant to costume designer Patricia Field, who was then working on the second “Sex and the City” movie, walked into her Los Angeles showroom. The stranger snapped some photographs, called in a few pieces and disappeared.
“In TV or film you never get samples back, because they all go to the wardrobe departments,” Wills tells The Post, though she did get a thank you card from Field and the “Sex and the City 2” ladies. “I didn’t even know if they used my pieces until I went to the premiere in Sydney [in 2010], and then there was Miranda on-screen wearing the earrings.”
Six years later, the 34-year-old is living her own “SATC”-worthy happy ending. Her business has blossomed from a shoestring operation, started in 2004, into a $12 million international juggernaut, with offices around the world. Celebs from Rihanna to Drew Barrymore have gone crazy for her big, boho statement pieces fashioned from silver, turquoise and unique stones. And she’s since moved to Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.
“It looks like an overnight success story,” says the tanned blonde. “But it took me 12 years to become an overnight success.”
Wills grew up an only child in Port Macquarie, Australia, a small coastal town north of Sydney. When she was 11, her mother enrolled her in beading classes to keep her “out of trouble.”
By high school, she was making shell necklaces and selling them to her surfer classmates on the playground. Wills skipped going to college and, in 2002 at age 20, packed her Toyota hatchback and joined a friend in Sydney, where she worked odd jobs and made jewelry at night.
Less than a year later, she began selling her creations at a weekend market, and in 2004 she rented showroom space from a friend during Australia fashion week.
“It was $500, and that was all I had in my bank account,” Wills says.
The gamble worked: The then-22-year-old suddenly had $17,000 in orders and quit her retail job.
But the influx of demand was a blessing and a curse. “I was working 20 hours a day, my hands were bleeding ... it became soul-destroying,” says Wills. By 2007, she was $80,000 in debt and had five maxed-out credit cards. “I didn’t know how to manage such high growth and demand,” she says. That year Wills found a business partner, who helped get her finances on track and find a production facility, so she could design and make connections with celebrity stylists. Now, she can’t imagine being anywhere but the city. “[New York] is so creatively inspiring,” says Wills, who enjoys hanging out with fellow expats at Malaparte in the West Village. Her other hobby? Spin classes. “SoulCycle and brunch — that’s what I do most weekends,” she says. “I sound like the biggest New York cliché ever.”