Eye Candy or Real Candy? Summer’s Most Hi-Fi Jewelry Among Hi-Dye Food
Shout out to Miami-based brand Chofa, which let us put their acrylic rings into jello.
Photographed by David Brandon Geeting
At just after 3 p.m., on an August day in New York City so hot that even the spotted lanternflies don’t feel like fluttering about, four people in a photo studio stand around a blob of orange jello.
The dome-shaped gelatin has been baked with several arcylic rings by Chofa inside, a laborious, multi-hour process that involved setting the mold with several layers so the rings are suspended in a spatially pleasing way. Surrounding the mold are smaller cubes of jello in a variety of colors: highlighter yellow, radioactive waste green, and Gatorade Cool blue.
A fifth—photographer David Brandon Geeting—looks through his camera lens and then back at a monitor. His expression is serious, his brow furrowed. He shakes his head. “I think it’s too desaturated,” he says. The four people nod. They remove cubes. They add cubes. They move cubes around. (“The pink and yellow can come slightly forward,” he directs.) After several minutes of fiddling, it’s time to step away from the jello. Someone pokes—hard—in order to make it jiggle and wiggle.
Click! An image appears on the screen. It looks like someone took an MRI of the innards of Jolly from Candy Land.
The photographer smiles. We got the shot. “The jello has no bad angles,” says the on-set stylist.
You may be wondering what Vogue and jello have in common. I’m so glad you asked. It all started in 1910 when this magazine—then a mere 18 years old—published an article called “Spring Luncheon for Little Girl’s Birthday,” where we gave the recipe for the following dessert: “Stir one tablespoonful of sugar into the juice of one orange and one lemon, and add to the jello when it has partly cooled. Just as the mixture begins to set, add the white of one egg beaten to a froth; then beat till it becomes like snow in appearance. Serve with whipped cream.” (Look, professional photography wasn’t readily accessible in the early 1900s, and neither was commercial air travel. Story options were limited.)
It continued during the wartime years, when the husband of Vogue’s merchandising editor wrote us a dispatch while stationed in New Guinea. He described his dinner as “meat, a thin soup, a vegetable, and a wonderful dessert of Jello with ‘reduced cream’ over it.” (WWII: again, a time in history where fashion story ideas were limited.) And lest we forget 2011, when Tim Walker photographed jello hats upon models dressed in kaleidoscopic tops by Christopher Kane. (By then, we had unlimited creative options—and willingly went with jelly.)
Actually, let’s keep going. I’ve got more facts to spit. Did you know that Peter Cooper invented the first edible gelatin in 1845? Combined with his shrewd New York City real estate holdings and a glue factory, he amassed a fortune so large that he went on to found the tuition-free art and science school, Cooper Union. A number of its alumni—including David Attie—became, and still are, valued contributors of our magazine thanks to his benevolent jello endowment. Then there was that time that an unnamed editor bought a spiked jello cake to our holiday party, and the next morning we all had hangovers in the office so horrific that it led to the team-bonding experience of a lifetime. So jello? It has everything to do with Vogue.
Although this might be the final chapter in our creative culinary union. The Department of Health and Human Services is moving to eliminate artificial dyes from food products by 2026. Jello will still exist, sure. But with a far less saturated jiggle.
So, after all this blobby mass has done for Vogue, we thought we’d give it a proper send-off with a full-blown photoshoot it deserves—along with some other fashionable food dye byproducts. (Blue raspberry sour ribbons, some rock crystal candy, and a random frosted cake our food stylist found at the Key Foods in Windsor Terrace… you get the idea.) Then, we asked some of our favorite jewelry designers to send us their own colorful candy-inspired accessories: Swarovski cocktail rings, Fry Powers resin pendants, Susan Alexandra Jelly table lighters. Call it the ultimate jello shot.
We stole a LaCroix can from a neighboring shoot’s craft services table and poured it over polka dot rings from Keane.
Photographed by David Brandon Geeting
We could never sour on these Pandora hoop earrings and Swarovski cocktail rings as well as cuff bracelets—but we did sour candy them.
Photographed by David Brandon Geeting
Simone I Smith crystal lollipops adorn a vanilla cake prop stylist Sue Li bought at Key Foods.
Photographed by David Brandon Geeting
In this story: Food Styling: Sue Li. Prop Styling: Jordan Mixon.
