Article By Aldus Santos

“Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette was rumored to have said once in response to complaints that the peasants she lorded over “had no more bread.” Pretty damn cold, I know. However, this was never established, and Jean-Jacques Rosseau must have been smoking something, or he was alluding to an entirely different person. The point I’m trying to make is that a luxurious life is a distorted reality, if reality was to be seen in terms of universal nakedness: that, underneath all the ruffles and pearls (or ironic “message” T-shirts and slim-fit denims, to the contemporary world), it’s all genitalia. Robert Zimmerman also said something to this effect in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”: “Even the president of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked.” In fleeting moments, however—when one shrugs off the crassness and occasional insensitivity—people like Marie Antoinette are walking canvases that are just amazing to look at.

Which is what she is to most people, especially if they didn’t live in France in the 1700s.

Ciara Marasigan-Serumgard is definitely not cheering for historical debauchery. The country’s most adventurous young jewelry designer is simply, at her core, a fan of beauty. Especially if it’s a beautiful thing from three hundred years ago. “I’m so impressed by certain women in history, like Marie Antoinette or the Duchess of Devonshire; they have this point of extreme relatability to me. The issues of women are so timeless, even if our cultures have changed. It’s that ultra-femininity that’s so evident in the way I think or the way I conduct myself,” she says at one point in our conversation, afterwards politely asking what my drink was (it’s pure chocolate, another debauched thing). Ciara has begun leafing through the biographies of these women, perhaps in an attempt to humanize what were previously just two-dimensional caricatures. When asked a silly question about time travel and where—and when, and in which culture—she’d want to be transplanted, she suggests in all earnestness that she’d opt for a time when Mary the Queen of Scots or Queen Elizabeth were around. People her age are wont to say “The ’50s” or “The ’60s”—and maybe that’s a little insulting to the time machine (“Come on, I mean really try me!” sputters the hapless little blinking box)—but Ciara is just not itching to chill with Jean Harlow or some random British mod. She would rather be in a Victorian-era courtyard as imagined by Baldassare Castiglione. “I’ve long had an extreme fascination over Queen Elizabeth. Her incredible wealth and prestige were always translated into her clothing. I’ve always wanted to meet her; it would be an incredible honor—but very impossible at that,” she adds, glassy-eyed at the mere thought.

For the full article by Aldus and complete photo set, you can grab a copy of the August 2009 issue of UNO with Ciara on the cover.