). For his line, Rosado was inspired by the plastic beads often used to make friendship bracelets at summer camp; nostalgia drove him to reinterpret the childlike craft into something more luxurious and elevated. But the endeavor came with its own set of challenges.“Me being who I am and having the background that I have, I always start at the top and strive to achieve the best level of quality craftsmanship,” he says. “I'm very much obsessed with quality craftsmanship.
“We had to create new tooling and machinery for this because, in order to hold a round object, we had to put pressure, which then made the pearl pop away. Plus, to be able to carve the pearls in order to achieve the angles right in the corners proved to be very difficult,” Rosado says. “And the curvature of the pearl changes [with different sizes]. Each time that I change the pearl, the letter has to change and the curvature of each piece has to change. It's very complicated.