Alexis Kirk was an American jewelry designer who also designed clothing and fashion accessories.
Kirk was born in Los Angeles and raised in New England. His family on the male side had serious artistic talents. His father, Paul Kirk, worked as an animator for the Walt Disney Company, and his grandfather, Charles Wemian, was a glass caster for the famous Rene Lalique.
After completing his studies at Harvard University, Alexis began a professional teaching career at the University of Tennessee while creating his jewelry in a small studio in Newport. His work quickly gained recognition among the local fashion elite, led by the wife of the then state senator. Success prompted the young designer to move to New York, where his first commercial jewelry collection, created in 1971, brought Alexis Kirk the prestigious COTY award (the highest award of American fashion critics).
Kirk’s works display a variety of ethnic influences, as well as the designer’s attraction to organic forms and materials – cork, wood, leather, tusk, and natural semi-precious stones.
His large-scale works attracted the attention of bright, extraordinary people – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, singer Cher. Kirk’s elephants, as a symbol of the Republican Party, were worn with pleasure on the neck and on belt buckles in the 1980s by America’s first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.
