There's a decent (if slightly suspect) reason why Danna Weiss (left) is starkers from the waist up on the website for her line, Conscious Jewelry. According to the designer, when she originally shot her baubles all by their lonesomes on the beach, the scale was off; rather than registering as the massive chunks of metaphysicality they are, they were coming across more like, say, grains of sand. My theory about the online peep show? The girl has a rocking bod, end of story. "There's this very big reaction to the site," chuckles Weiss, a former stylist who, after a long illness, fought her way back to health with the help, she says, of crystals and is now living in abundance (and guiding private clients in stone-selection) as a certified crystal healer on the Upper West Side.
"Some people absolutely love it, and others are totally violated by it." I'm a bit more Switzerland about the whole thing. Besides, I was there to hear about bijoux, not B cups. So after a few bites of (oddly delicious) tree nut cheese, I kneeled on a silk cushion and dove into her sea of luxe stones. My mission: To select the one that "spoke" to me. Since each of Weiss's rocks is imbued with its own special gestalt, as well as the (alleged) ability to heal various ailments, wearers are supposedly drawn to the one that both describes who they are and addresses all their bodily bits that need fixing.
Why does it not surprise me that I chose the most yawn-worthy of the bunch? Yup, it seems my choice—a blue lace agate—is the "motherhood" stone, and its raison d'etre is to alleviate arthritis. Well alrighty. "You and Anne Hathaway!" Weiss sweetly chirped. And here's the thing: I may buy that one, as well as a few others. They're reasonably priced (in the $400 ballpark), and from a peer-pressure perspective, they're selling like hotcakes at Kirna Zabete.
After exiting Weiss's lair, I rushed right to a nearby Barnes & Noble to pick up a self-help book she said I would basically die if I didn't read. (You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay.) Still, I couldn't resist grabbing the Lagerfeld Confidential DVD on my way to the checkout line. But that still totally counts, right? I didn't break the sacred circle of crunchiness by slipping the Kaiser onto my credit card, did I?
