Aurelia Cotton and Patrick Culpepper of Peppercotton didn’t set out to be jewelry designers—which means that they had no preconceived ideas about what makes a good necklace. So when they hit on the idea of filling mesh tubing with Swarovski and vintage Czech crystals, they ran with it. Before they knew it, the two Rhode Island School of Design grads had a business—and we had some cool new necklaces to love. Today the pair work from their Brooklyn studio, carefully mixing crystals for color and tone properties and in general creating beautifully organized chaos, which is not as easy as it sounds. “To create smooth gradients, the crystals have to change size as well as color to blend evenly,” explains Cotton. “Bigger crystals are used for the solid lengths of color and smaller crystals are used to transition colors.”