Bakoven Meets Berghain with Rethread and Pina Collab PIERCED

-Kajal Shah

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When I discovered there was a Pina Jewels and Rethread collaboration, I wasn’t sure what that would look like: Pina Daisies tacked onto Rethread’s Joop dress? What shape would a creation from these two powerhouse brands take? Thankfully, Courteney Krauss and Alexa Schempers, founders of Pina and Rethread respectively, were far more poetic in their creations. 

Launched on the 13th of December of last year, The PIERCED collection is a treasure chest of mixed-material hoops with interchangeable charms. The pieces are customizable - the charms can be switched out, layered, and assembled in a menagerie of personalised and pleasing ways. The shapes are smooth and structural with a shot of cyber punk: Bakoven meets Berghain.

There’s no compromise from either brand; their visual worlds meet in chorus. Krauss describes her Cape Town-based brand, Pina- a demi-fine, locally handcrafted jewelry label- as having a design language that is playful with considered risk. Pina creates pieces that feel easy and wearable, yet carry a strong point of view: Mixed metals, cheeky details, bold, chunky silhouettes that make a statement without excess. There’s an inherent lightness and irreverence to Pina’s aesthetic — refined, never rigid.

Schempers positions Rethread, a Cape Town-based fashion label creating versatile, small-batch collections with bold silhouettes and thoughtful design, within a similar ethos of harmonious disruption. The brand is built on reinvention- garments designed to evolve with the wearer- and leans into contrast: sculptural tailoring with raw edges, masculine structure softened by feminine silhouettes, polish interrupted by grit.

Their shared language is modularity. Admittedly, it’s the customizable capability that drew me in. Customisable jewellery isn’t new — lest we forget the letter necklaces of the 2000s (‘T’ as in Troy?) — but it has evolved far beyond sentimental kitsch. Gen Z demands a wardrobe that accounts for every blossoming inch of identity- what Who What Wear has described as hyper-personal style. A Labubu dangles from a vintage Guess bag; an internet meme is screen-printed across a baby tee. I’m no stranger to burying my belongings beneath a sheath of stickers. I want a me-thing in this sea of same-things. Fast fashion’s acceleration makes that desire feel urgent. I half expect discarded bubble skirts from Shein to fuse together into a Lion’s Head-like formation above Tamboerskloof.

Equally considered is the partnership between hyper-personal expression and longevity. The pieces are crafted in brass and plated in rhodium or 18k gold. There’s something romantic about jewellery that ages with you- gathering small mementos as it rests on your bedside table, mingling with salt air on holiday or cigarette smoke at the club. Here, personalization becomes a double entendre. As a final stroke of genius, the designers included a PIERCED tee — a soft-fitting shirt punctured with metal charms at the nipples. It flirts with trend in a way that feels cool and self-aware, never crass.

The PIERCED collection offers a high-fashion equivalent of a Yoshitomo Nara sticker on a Moleskine — an inner dialogue rendered beautifully on the body.