Meet the Pandora muses who are championing female empowerment and self expression

It's been a big month for Pandora, not content with unveiling their latest Autumn 2019 collection, the company revealed a complete brand re-launch – placing a renewed focus on female empowerment, individuality and a spirit of innovation at its core - on a global scale that only a brand like Pandora could get away with; painting LA pink...

To celebrate this all-encompassing global movement, the newly appointed Pandora Muses: Nathalie Emmanuel, Georgia May Jagger, Halima Aden, Larsen Thompson, Margaret Zhang and Tasya van Ree joined forces to create an inclusive female force for good, a sentiment echoed in the pink Pandora 'Street of Loves', where the space between South Grand Avenue and Hope Street in LA, became one sprawling art installation.

Curated by C. Finley, perhaps best known for her huge outdoor mural of the Divine Female, the street-art activist commissioned six up and coming female artists to transform the whole road bright pink, resulting in one of the biggest female street art exhibitions in the world.

We caught up with Margaret, Larsen and Georgia to talk all things Pandora, carving your own path and how to fight digital fatigue...

'Be prepared for a lot of schooling if you’re a woman working in the creative industries…

It’s a process and people that have been in the industry for twenty years still are facing the same issues and the statistics are not good as far as women in film and even in the commercial space. We need to make sure there are woman in the room on all angles, whether that’s people buying films or pitching films or producers… there’s always one little corporate corner that we’ve forgotten about that’s actually a very important piece to the puzzle. Because without that you can’t actually get to 100, you’re always kind of like sitting at 50 per cent and you can’t get that out to the people.

You have to know what you stand for in the film industry…

And you have to really know who you are, and I think something that women and people of colour and minorities sometimes have trouble coming to terms with is that what makes you different is actually the value that you bring to the table. I don’t need to be the person who makes a Caucasian teenager coming of age film, because that is not my life experience, and somebody else can do that very well. There’s a lot of mentality around, "oh, let me embody somebody else" as a way to be commercially viable or whatever, whereas you actually just have to celebrate yourself…

For the Pandora campaign, my values were very much aligned…

All the girls involved are such great individual hustlers in their own right. I have this mentality of expanding my world view because I know myself and my experience very well, but there’s no way that I would know Georgia’s particular perspective on ocean conservation, for example. I’m very passionate about ocean conservation but she has a very different way of coming about it. You know you only grow your worldview and expand your ideology by interacting with other people, like when I was with Halima. Of course I did not grow up in a refugee camp, but understanding her experience and how she overcomes her challenges …it gives you a lot of perspective, so I’m always very drawn to working with interesting groups of women.

I think I’m in a constant state of digital fatigue!

It is something that’s a struggle, perhaps more so for my brother, as it’s all they’ve really known – this digital world. Even though I’m only two years younger, our high school experience was so different because we didn’t have laptops, it was all still handwritten, which is such a foreign concept now, so I still have that standard of that separation. I will say that I am more attached to my technology than I would really like to be but I have really clear lines of what’s public and private, and real life interactions are so important!

It sometimes feels like you’re in this rat race, especially if you’re ambitious…

You have a lot of things going on all at once, which as a creative now is kind of expected as you have to stay on top of everything, but I definitely think there’s value. That’s why film is so instructive because previously, I’ve always done ten things at the same time, whereas with my film, focusing on production for six months is such an attractive idea to me - that you can really dig deep and concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time.'

'There’s no real plan of what I want to do…

What I’ve learnt over the past two years is that I can fuse all three things I love together - whether it’s dancing, modelling, acting. I just did Pink’s music video and I play her, so I was able to incorporate acting and dancing and also have the fashion side of things going on, which I love.

I’m really focussed on modelling and fashion…

I just filmed two feature films. One comes out at the end of September, called Bloodline and stars Seann William Scott – it’s a horror film and it was my first film ever so I’m really excited about that, and my character is literally so evil in it! And then I did a feature film directed by Bobby Roth, and Anthony LaPaglia is my co-star and that’s going to Sundance – so fingers crossed for that!

Rose gold is my thing…

I used to do gold but it doesn’t really look good with my skin tone, so I just switched to rose gold and now I’ve fallen in love with it because it matches my hair. Plus, with these Pandora charm bracelets you can literally customise it to exactly how you want, it’s so personality-driven so now I’m like ooh, this is my new little trick – rose gold. Thank you!

At Pandora I’m surrounded by a group of such beautiful and diverse women…

We’re coming together to inspire young girls and women in general to be themselves and to express their creativity and their passions and their loves and I think the brand is giving an opportunity to the world to share their stories – it is so incredible and it’s something I try to portray on my social pages.

I love to get to know my supporters and also to encourage them to be themselves and let them know that they’re beautiful and that they should love themselves for who they are, so I’m happy to be a part of this campaign because it’s something that I’m so passionate about.

Coco Rocha has taken me under her wing…

She’s been an inspiration of mine forever and she has that dance background like me, so she’s helped me and given me so much advice. I’m also very, very close with my family and they’re my support system - they definitely keep me very grounded and have so much wisdom from their experiences, I learn from them and I grow with them, so I’m really blessed to be in that position.

My aunt, Julianne McNamara, was an Olympic gymnast in 1984...

She was there with Mary Lou Retton. She is the first woman ever to win a gold on the bars for the US, so I’ve definitely got the dance/gymnast thing from her – and as she’s been in the public eye she was someone who I turned to for advice. She told me, “you need tough skin”, and taught me a lot about the industry, so I’m very grateful for that.'

It may be an unpopular opinion in fashion but I don’t really subscribe to trends...

I think we have a responsibility to think about the provenance of clothes: where they come from, who made them and the factories they were produced in. I go on and I want to know what the brands are and where the clothes have come from. Have they been sourced responsibility and been made ethically? I think we need to ask those questions.

I always veer towards timeless pieces that won’t date.

It's why I love vintage and I'm lucky to have access to some amazing pieces, so I end up wearing a lot of my mum's clothes - leather jackets, denim... it never dates.

Saying that, I do love bags, and got obsessed with 'The Olivia Pope Bag' in Scandal...

She just is so cool. It had sold out, but I managed to find one and now I literally use it the whole time.

I love to clash my jewellery...

I think mixing your metals looks really good, so I always mix up wearing gold and silver. Right now I'm wearing all silver, and like the idea of looping these asymmetrical Pandora hearts together, so it's heart upon heart upon heart to make one long drop earring.

The new Pandora Autumn collection is out now