I log on for a recent Zoom with Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina star Lachlan Watson, and I immediately know we're kindred spirits. Why? We both have chunky, platinum blonde highlights framing our faces. "I noticed immediately," they say about our matching hair. "I was like, 'Oh my God, we're twins.'" I agree. "I keep saying once the roots grow out, I'm going to dye it blue or something cool," they say. I laugh and say mine was just purple. Matching hair color aside, Watson and I are here to talk about jewelry, and since we're 11 months into a global pandemic and Zoom pros, I cut right to the chase. I'm dying to know Watson's favorite piece of jewelry. "All right," they say with a smirk. "I'm taking you with me." Before I know it, they've grabbed their laptop, virtually taking me on an impromptu home tour. They settle into another room, rummage through a jewelry box, and hold up a piece of blue moss kyanite.
"It's polished moss kyanite, which apparently is one of the most rare and expensive forms of kyanite," says Watson of the necklace they found in Vancouver. "But the guy who sold it to me didn't know that, so he sold it to me for, like, next to nothing ... It took him 30 extra minutes because he wanted to put these little stars and moons on [the casing] for me because he thought my aura needed it."
The color of the ocean and the sky, blue can represent freedom, imagination, and expansiveness, according to Bourn Creative, which is fitting for Watson, who's partnering with PANDORA Jewelry for its Colors Collection, a line featuring classic PANDORA silhouettes with a wide array of colored gemstones. Within the collection, Watson models — what else? — a deep, classic royal blue. "Color has always been my way of expressing my emotions and innermost self, and being able to magnify those things through jewelry and fashion is a beautiful privilege," they said on the PANDORA website.
Watson's connection to style is evident in their wildly fashionable Instagrams, although it goes deeper than a cool photo or even this PANDORA partnership. Recently, they were photographed wearing a stunning full Alexander McQueen look at a virtual red carpet for CAOS' final season. They also scored a spread for Vogue Italia they're still not convinced is real. (Trust me, it is.) As we joke about all the TikTok fashion aesthetics making the rounds ("I feel like I'm a really wild mix of all of them," they say), Watson casually drops an idea for a fashion brand that combines each one. "My fashion brand will be called 'Maximalism by Lachlan Watson,' coming in 2032," they say. "That would be such a good name. When I get bored of Lachlan, I'll change my name to Maximalism, and it'll be all your fault."
Ahead, in their own words, Watson talks vintage shopping, the story behind their favorite necklace, their PANDORA collab, and more.
Elite Daily: Walk me through your partnership with PANDORA. How did it come about?
Lachlan Watson: I remember as a kid, I'd always watch the CoverGirl with Ellen commercials or whatever. I always was like, "I want to do that. I bet that'd be really, really fun." PANDORA reached out to me at the end of last year. They were like, "Hey, we're doing this really cool campaign, and we want you to be part of it." It happened really quickly ... My friends were texting me like, "Are we going to see you on the billboard of the PANDORA store in the local mall?" I was like, "I don't know, maybe."
ED: I want to talk about these commercial ventures in general. I mean, you had a Vogue story, which was incredible.
LW: I keep forgetting about that. I'm like, I had a Vogue [story]? No, I didn't.
ED: But you did! Talk to me a little bit about all of a sudden having these huge opportunities thrown your way that you [wanted] as a kid. How does it feel now having that dropped in your lap?
LW: Clearly in my brain, it's not even happening. To see someone who looked like me or to see their future self on screen or on an ad I think is a really fun. It satiates a deeper part of me than just getting acting roles. Because I think I always was like, [acting's] what I'm going to do. But getting to meet all these cool people and work with these cool brands like PANDORA has been a really neat sort of thing. I'd never expected to have so much fun with it.
ED: Are you a big jewelry person? Or a big accessory person in general?
LW: I am beside myself that I don't have on jewelry right now. I spent the 20 minutes that I knew I needed to get ready for this doing this makeup and putting on the shirt and brushing my hair. I didn't think about putting on all my jewelry. I feel like I've betrayed myself.
I adore jewelry. I grew up around my mom who had two different turquoise rings on each finger, and I thought that was so cool. So I kind of grew up with having jewelry be a sort of androgynous form of self-expression. Being able to do a shoot all around jewelry was really fulfilling and felt very true to me, that they just coated me head to toe in rings. They put one of the earrings in my septum ring.
ED: What's the one type of accessory you have way too many of? To the point where you're like, "I need to chill"?
LW: Vintage clothes and vintage jewelry have been really fun to collect. I think I get that from my mom, too. We used to go thrift shopping and vintage shopping all the time as a kid, because I was so little and tiny that I could fit into all of these crazy clothes that no one else could fit into. I used to have so much fun telling the store owner, "What do you have that's really cool? What do you have that doesn't fit anybody? What jewelry do you have that's androgynous?" They'd have the most fun time just going and finding things for me. It was this really raw form of connection with people, just bonding over jewelry and bonding over clothes. Also, my really dramatic lighting's going away, and I'm very sad about it.
ED: I was like, "Look at this golden hour business over here!"
LW: I'll just follow it, and by the end of the interview, I'll be standing on my couch.
ED: What's your favorite piece of PANDORA Jewelry?
LW: Earrings. I use [the Light Blue Solitaire Huggie Hoop Earrings ($55, PANDORA)] as a septum ring now. I love the versatility of PANDORA pieces and how you can use them in more ways than one. I'd never think of using an earring as a septum piercing, but because of the versatility of PANDORA Jewelry, I'm able to.
ED: That's so true. With jewelry, you can play around and be one person with one look and then, the next day, be another person with a completely different look.
LW: I can cosplay Howl's Moving Castle. Then, the next day, I can look like I just moved from El Paso. It's great. I love jewelry.
ED: You are just serving look after look after look. I was like, "They're flexing on me so hard right now. They're wearing McQueen. They have bleached eyebrows." Can you speak a bit to how or if fashion played a huge part in you becoming comfortable in your identity and in who you are as a person?
LW: Well, I think it's kind of the opposite in a way, where once I finally figured out who I was and got really comfortable and secure in my own gender and in my own self-expression, that's when I found I had the most fun with clothing. I'm having the most fun doing fashion and photo shoots and commercial shoots and fun things like that. I identified as a trans man for two years in high school, and that wasn't right for me. I did that because I thought I had to, and it was kind of all the verbiage I had, but it was really limiting. I wouldn't let myself wear pink for those two years. I wore shoes that were two sizes too big for me because I wanted my tiny baby feet to look bigger.
When I sort of cut the other side of that and came out as non-binary, I thought, "Why did I do that to myself? Why did I take those things away from myself?" Those things are a part of me. I used to love pink as a kid. I ran around in dresses with cargo shorts underneath, climbing trees and playing with my dolls all the time. I donated a lot of my childhood jewelry because I was like, well, I don't need those anymore, I'm trans. Now, I miss that because that is such a huge part of me, and it's a part of all of us. To have to sort of put that away for a while really taught me a lot about who I am and what I want.
ED: I would love to know the same about your journey with beauty. You're serving me this two-tone, duo-chrome magic right now. How do you draw inspiration for these looks? How do they speak to who you are?
LW: This look I did because I had 20 minutes, and these were the colors in front of me, so that tells you about my idea of beauty. I think it's similar, in a way, because I started relearning why I love glamor when I came out as non-binary. Makeup and beauty and hair have always been a huge part of my identity. I always joke about how I have this really bad memory, and I can remember things based on what color my hair was at the time. If you tell me, "you had green hair at the time," I will ask you, "was it the dark green, the teal, or the bright green?" If you say, "the bright green," then I'll know it was from August 2016 until December. So it's always had a huge role in defining my life and defining who I was in those moments.
Beauty is and will always be an ever-growing, constantly flowing kind of lesson for me, but it's just one of the purest forms of feeling good. So beauty is a neat one. Neat. There goes neat again.
ED: The headline of this piece is literally just going to be "neat." That's it.
LW: Neat.
Shop Lachlan's favorite PANDORA piece below:
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