Lifestyle & Culture

Jewelry that Connects Cultures

By Alexis Davis
Spectrum staff

When Alzerina Gomes was 20 years old and scrubbing toilets in a French flat, her employer—a woman who, at the time, was a Swarovski crystal creative director—asked her a question.

“Do you model?” said Gomes, 44, founder of Alzerina jewelry, sitting in her Upper East Side apartment and remembering what the woman said.

Gomes, a native of Cape Verde, had been in Paris for just a year, at the time. In Paris, she hoped to find a job paying enough money to help support her family back on that island off the coast of Senegal, West Africa.

Her mother worked as a seamstress—at 14, Gomes started helping with that work—and her father worked in agriculture. Her family was poor. “Maybe we would have breakfast and no lunch and then dinner and no breakfast,” Gomes said.

That poverty is farther behind her now. Stars of five Warner Brothers films, Miss America and Miss Universe contestants and characters on the Disney Chanel’s Liv and Maddy have worn what Gomes, and her interns, produce from her home.

She sells her work at Paris shops, various street festivals in New York, New England and Cape Verde and on online. She’s planning to open a store.

Elements of Cape Verdean culture and Swarovski crystals are in Gomes’ pieces. In her Cabo Verde collection, for example, Gomes uses the konta d’oju. Cape Verdeans believes konta d’oju protects you from evil spirits and brings you good luck.

“I’m someone who loves good energy. I am full of energy. So I’m going to chose to believe that this bead mixed with crystals is going to bring people good luck or bring at least good energy,” Gomes said.

She tries to create a good vibe while working with her interns, too, including the one who is a budding jewelry maker.

“She gives me a lot of freedom to share my own ideas,” said Skylar Bao, 21, the jewelry design intern and one of three of Gomes’ interns.

Gomes moved to the United States 17 years ago. At least once a year, she visits Cape Verde to continue her service projects. She shares her business savvy with women who want to start their own businesses. She does workshops and other activities with 4- to 18-year-old girls who have been victims of rape. She sends pencils, paper, books, paint and art and other supplies to Cape Verde schools.

Without them knowing it, she is helping to pay for a few Cape Verdean kids college educations in the United States, she said.

Those are among the ways she tries to stay closely connected to Cape Verde and to share its culture with the rest of the world.

“Cape Verde is my inspiration, Cape Verde is my light. Cape Verde guides me,” Gomes said. “Whatever I do and dream, Cape Verde has come to help.”