Baring their teeth: 5 oral art designers getting up in your grill

Clova Rae-Smith, Juanita Care, Youth Grillz Paris, Joshua Myszczynski, and Tu Desomer-Chu are a handful of designers taking teeth to another level

19January 2021

It’s 2021 and we’re leaving the dangerous teeth whitening trend behind us (step away from the household bleach TikTok…). Once we stop the fruitless search for perfectionism and swap it for individuality, the possibilities are limitless.

Grillz and oral art are by no means new: baring a mouth full of gold dates way back to the Etruscans, an ancient Italian society in 800 BC and later became a defining feature in 80s hip hop music videos worn by the likes of Slick Rick and Flavor Flav. Today, whether we’re obsessing over Frank Ocean’s latest tooth cap or debating if Madonna’s grillz cross the line from cultural appreciation to appropriation, oral art claims its place in popular culture and is here to stay.

More than a fashion accessory, oral art is a form of self-expression. As the most intimate part of our bodies with which we kiss, communicate, and consume, the mouth is full of potential for artistic exploration of the interior. Each tooth offers its own little canvas onto which we can paint the story we want to present to the world.

No two sets of teeth are alike and in the dental jewellery industry this is a cause for celebration. Diastemata, the gap-tooth or as the French like to call them ‘les dents du bonheur’, are decorated with diamonds rather than forced into place with braces. Redefining societal beauty standards, the oral arts industry encourages us to embrace our originality, experiment, and have fun.

Here, we meet five upcoming oral art designers who aren’t afraid to get up in your grill.

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@clovajewellery

CLOVA RAE-SMITH

Telling it with her teeth, Clova Rae-Smith is the Central Saint Martins jewellery design student translating narratives into oral art. “Your smile is the first thing people notice, so you’ve got to make it count,” Clova explains. For the artist, grillz are not just an aesthetic asset but a “way to express yourself without words”, reflected in her first piece – a silver enamel rainbow grill as a celebration of Pride and her identity. A true celebration of self, Clova is not just interested in the parts we embrace but equally in those we tend to shy away from. Instead of decorating her teeth with pretty roses, she outlines them with thorns. Her aesthetic is as daring as it is delicate, with abstract designs curving around the teeth shimmering in silver and gold. Rae-Smith sees her work as a way to push the boundaries of jewellery’s ability to tell stories, something she hopes to explore further in her upcoming final collection.

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@juanita.care_

JUANITA CARE

Juanita of Juanita Care explores and exploits the intersection between fear and desire through their grillz. In Juanita’s world, our darkest fantasies dominate in their true form, the more surreal the better. Their creative process is less about operating around a set vision and more about allowing their bodily instincts and urges to pave the way. “I like to think of Juanita Care as a laboratory for thinking about bodies,” they explain. Drawing on their fascination with medical imagery and shamanism, Juanita creates pieces that harmonise their “poetry and more personal reflections on changing bodies”. The result is the transformation of what we recognise as human to that of an alternate dimension, Juanita’s horror-fantasy. From a piece that reveals a third ear on the roof of the mouth to a grill that swaps your pearly whites for razor sharp spears, Juanita’s work is the epitome of the avant-garde. A forward thinker, Juanita recognises the accompanying environmental challenges in working within oral art and hopes to find ways to make the industry more sustainable in the future.

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@youthgrillzworldwide

WARREN, YOUTH GRILLZ PARIS

Warren of Youth Grillz Paris is the jeweller making “Grillz for the Culture”. After completing training as a dental technician, he searched for something that felt more like him. Blending an interest in fashion, pop culture, and dental prostheses, the young jeweller decided to explore the oral arts industry and became particularly hooked on the artistic potential of grillz. Describing his work as “a pure creative process” he carefully balances satisfying his own aesthetic appetite and that of his followers, while “standing out from what is already done”. From flashing a message across your pearly whites in the ultimate statement piece, to blood-red teeth and lips paying homage to Leigh Bowery, Warren constantly surprises. Fascinated by finding out what makes each individual tick, his dream is to make oral art something for everyone.

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@joshua.myszczynski

JOSUHA MYSZCZYNSKI

Joshua Myszczynski wants to redefine the misconception that grillz are harsh aesthetically. An artist with a refreshingly liberated approach to design, Myszczynski describes his style as a “quite random mash-up of my interests and ideas that come to my mind”. The results are pieces inspired by everything from skeletons that dance when you speak, to Jigglypuff tooth caps. Just like his work, the artist describes his fall into jewellery design as equally spontaneous and never expected to end up in this line of work. After a brief introduction to jewellery design during a one-year foundation course at Camberwell, he turned to YouTube and the combination of many hours watching tutorials, asking for insider-tips around jewellery stores in Hatton Garden, and a fair bit of trial and error taught him everything he knows about the craft. While the inspirations that drive his work constantly evolve, his fixation on grillz is here to stay. Ultimately, as Josh concludes: “An interesting set of grillz is a perfect way to make a statement”.

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TU DESOMER-CHU, SMILEZ JEWELLERY

Known as a kind of “grillz guru” among other jewellery designers who seek his expertise, it’s safe to say that Tu Desomer-Chu of Smilez Jewellery knows a thing or two about oral art. The designer has been in the game for a while – having worked at the heart of London’s famous jewellery district Hatton Garden for years, and in the trade for almost a decade. As an industry which reshapes itself constantly, he explains that the current craze for grillz is all about the changing perception of oral art with a new ever-expanding audience. Now an essential part of the fashion-forward fit, Desomer-Chu says that he has people coming in to search for custom-made grillz just “to match their earrings”. Dazzling with diamonds, his work possesses an almost hypnotic quality. The philosophy of Smilez Jewellery being that jewellery is deeply personal, the designer dedicates his time to creating bespoke pieces which represent their owner in all of their uniqueness. “You can easily put your political beliefs into a grillz design,” he explains.

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