Porsha Bella Jewellery

 

Sarah-Jane, it has been lovely connecting with you. Thank you for participating in my occasional series, 'Australians in France.' Can you tell us about yourself and your French connection?

Bonjour Catherine,

Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of your blog series. I’ll do my best to answer your questions with complete honesty, because I suspect my experience of life in France is probably a little different from the stereotypical expat story!

I’m married to a wonderful man called Jack. Back in Brisbane, Australia, we had a large machinery and manufacturing business, which we spent far too many hours working in. Seven days a week and 16 hour days were not unusual!

It afforded us a wonderful, privileged life. We designed and built our dream home, owned some rather incredible supercars, and spent our spare time indulging our shared passion for cars, motorbikes and pretty much anything involving motorsport.

After 15 years in the business, though, I suddenly realised I wanted something that was just for me. So I embarked on a Goldsmith course and spent five years doing night classes and weekends learning the traditional techniques of handcrafting jewellery.

I absolutely loved it.

At the time, jewellery making was simply my hobby. I sold a few pieces and created quite a few custom designs for friends and family, but I never imagined that it would eventually become my career.

 

Interestingly, I had no real connection to France at all, other than visiting occasionally during our motorhome holidays. We did, however, fall completely in love with the French Alps, particularly Haute-Savoie. I can remember saying almost 20 years ago, “If we ever win the lottery, this is where I want to live.”

Well, we didn't win the lottery, but about five years later we found ourselves selling almost everything we owned, keeping only my jewellery making and Jack's extensive business tools and a few sentimental things that would fit into half a shipping container.

Then we bought two one-way tickets from Brisbane to France.

We said some very difficult goodbyes to friends and family and boarded that plane with absolutely no idea what was ahead of us.

We also flew our two dogs with us, and if I'm completely honest, I was far more stressed about them flying than I was about anything else!

Thankfully, we all arrived safely.

 

You ended up buying and renovating a house in France. Was it in the Haute-Savoie? What advice would you give to other families who are dreaming of buying in France?

Initially, we planned to spend three months in a holiday home near Bordeaux because we both loved the city. We found a tiny village between Bordeaux and Toulouse, which was a wonderful base for exploring both cities.

We looked at a lot of properties, but nothing really captured our hearts.

Through a bizarre series of circumstances, those three months eventually turned into almost four years, during which we rented a haunted house.

And not haunted in a fun way either!

 

Although we loved being close to Bordeaux and Toulouse, we realised that the area wasn't quite what we were looking for. There was a large English-speaking expat population, and we actually wanted the opposite experience. We also discovered that the climate wasn't for us. The summers felt too hot and too long, while the winters seemed relentlessly grey & rainy.

So we started looking towards the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which was where we'd originally imagined ourselves living.

We viewed 36 houses.

By that point, I was done.

We eventually resigned ourselves to the fact that perhaps we'd never buy a house in France and simply continued renting in the south. For six months, we didn't look at a single property.

Then one day I opened leboncoin and had another look at houses in the region we wanted.

And there it was.

My dream farmhouse.

 

We viewed it within days and made an offer that same day. Three months later, we were moving into an incredible farmhouse built in 1798, which had been abandoned for five years.

It was officially classed as “barely habitable”, which, let me tell you, was extremely accurate!

With my love of interior design, Jack's ability to do almost anything and some rather inventive solutions, it wasn't long before a few rooms started to feel homely and loved. We've now been renovating our home for eight years, and we're still not tired of it.

 

The separate bread oven building, which dates from 1796, has been converted into my purpose built jewellery workshop. I absolutely love working in there.

My advice to anyone considering buying property in France is to have a LOT of patience.

Be brutally honest with yourself about how much renovation you can handle and, importantly, how much you would actually enjoy. The paperwork is never ending and the legal process can be lengthy, so don't expect things to happen quickly.

Be prepared for everything to take at least three times longer than your original estimate.

And get very familiar with the French phrase “c'est rustique”!

When you start renovating centuries-old stone houses, nothing is straight, square or symmetrical. You either learn to embrace the rustic results or you'll drive yourself completely insane.

You are the force behind Porsha Bella Jewellery where you create unique pieces of wearable art from your studio at home. On your socials, we see you at work and hear tales of your craft. It is fascinating, but clearly hard work. What is the Porsha Bella story?

In 2018, I decided it was time to get serious about my jewellery and officially register my business in France.

This was a gigantic step for me. I was very familiar with business structures in Australia, but I had absolutely no idea how anything worked in France. It was a baptism of fire.

Part of the process involved a mandatory five day course about owning and running a business, followed by an exam on the final day.

I didn't understand a single word.

Not one.

Thankfully, the lecturer apparently wanted to maintain his 100% pass rate and helpfully gave me the answers during the exam!

Once I received my official business registration, I was off and running.

 

But the story of Porsha Bella actually started many years earlier.

During one of our French motorhome trips, we wandered into a tiny backstreet antique shop in Lyon. Inside, I discovered something that completely changed the direction of my jewellery making: antique French buttons.

 

They were little works of art, covered in intricate designs and carrying an extraordinary amount of history.

The shopkeeper told me that some of the buttons had come from his great grandfather's French military coat from World War I. Others had belonged to field medical personnel, while some dated back to the 1700s and had been worn on the uniforms of staff working in the homes of French nobility.

I was enthralled.

Of course, that little tin of rusty, tarnished buttons came home with me.

That's when I decided to replace gemstones with buttons as the feature of my jewellery.

 

I launched Porsha Bella in 2012, but nobody really understood what I was doing. I didn't sell a single piece of button jewellery.

I seriously considered abandoning the idea and going back to more traditional gemstone jewellery.

But something in me wasn't prepared to give up on it.

At that stage, jewellery was still a hobby, so I didn't particularly care whether it sold or not. I simply loved the concept.

 

Then in 2014 we moved to France.

And in 2018 I registered the business here.

Then came 2020.

As you probably remember, online shopping suddenly became enormous, and Porsha Bella took off. I sold every single piece I had in stock and suddenly had demand for much, much more.

Finally, people were beginning to understand what I had seen in those old buttons all those years ago.

Today, Porsha Bella is all about “wearable history”. I work with French antique buttons dating from as far back as the Napoleonic era, right through to the 1990s, as well as vintage designer buttons from Chanel, Dior, YSL, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada.

 

Many of the designer buttons come from a remarkable collection belonging to a woman in Paris whose mother was a head seamstress for several major French fashion houses. She worked in the industry from the 1920s until she retired at the age of 80 and meticulously catalogued the buttons, including what garments they had been used on and any other information she knew about them.

I also have a wonderful gentleman in France who attends the famous Paris fashion auctions and regularly finds extraordinary buttons and handbag hardware for me.

 

I then transform these forgotten pieces into one of a kind earrings, bracelets, pendants, rings and charms.

Everything is handcrafted using traditional Goldsmith techniques, with solid sterling silver, 18ct gold and gold vermeil.

What I love most is knowing that I'm not simply making jewellery. I'm giving these little pieces of French history another life.

I have buttons from Napoleon's soldiers.

Honestly, that still blows my mind.

These things were destined to sit forgotten in a tin, slowly rusting away. I get to turn them into something that can be worn, appreciated and passed on.

If you'd like to see what I do, you can visit my website at porshabella.com or find me on Instagram @porshabellajewellery.

So fascinating. Do you speak French? I talk frequently with families who feel that their French would not be sufficient for living in, working or buying in France. What are your thoughts about the level of language required?

Honestly?

Don't worry about not speaking French.

I arrived in France knowing approximately five French words. I couldn't read or write anything in French.

Twelve years later, I'm only marginally better!

Part of the reason is that I was once expelled from a French language school in front of 25 other students because the teacher decided the beginner class was too advanced for me. She told me I'd never be able to speak French and would probably be better off going back to Australia.

It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

It genuinely scarred me and completely destroyed my confidence and my desire to learn the language.

I'll be honest: I don't enjoy learning French. I don't like speaking it and, given the choice, I'd happily avoid it altogether.

Unfortunately, moving from an area with a large English speaking expat population to the middle of nowhere in the Auvergne meant I eventually had to accept that French was rather important!

So I hired a private tutor who is a native French speaker, and I've slowly been relearning.

I'm still not fluent, but I can now hold a reasonable conversation and muddle my way through most situations.

I do think learning some French before moving here would be beneficial, though. Not because you need to be fluent, but because life is considerably easier when you can communicate with the people around you.

And if you're planning to live in a rural area, I'd say it's even more important.

Do you enjoy living in your small French village?

This probably isn't what most people want to hear, but this is my reality and my lived experience.

As a foreigner, I don't think you'll ever be completely accepted into French village life. People can be wonderfully pleasant and cordial, but you'll always be the outsider to some degree.

You need to be comfortable with that.

I didn't move to France to make new friends or become an integral part of a community. I moved to the Alps specifically because I wanted no neighbours, no traffic and very little social interaction.

I'm an introvert.

I'm socially awkward, I can't stand small talk and I have genuinely been known to run three kilometres out of my way on my morning run to avoid accidentally bumping into someone I know because  I'll have to stop and talk to them!

So village life and I aren't exactly a natural match.

 

Here, everyone knows everyone else's business. The village gossip can be extraordinary, particularly because it doesn't necessarily need to be remotely accurate before it starts circulating!

I think the final nail in our coffin came when we built huge solid gates and a solid fence across the front of our property so nobody could simply “pop in” unannounced.

I enjoy my privacy. I enjoy my peace.

I rarely participate in village activities. I make an appearance at the annual Christmas market and the village clean up weekend, and that's about it.

And honestly, I'm perfectly happy with that.

 

For me, France became a way of becoming completely comfortable with being introverted. Not speaking the same language, not knowing a single person and being removed from the life I'd known in Australia gave me something I didn't realise I needed: the opportunity to truly get to know myself.

I became comfortable with silence.

I discovered a resilience I didn't know I had.

The Australian version of me and the French version of me are almost unrecognisable.

My life in Australia was loud, busy and outward facing. I was networking, talking to strangers and constantly “on” for 25 years.

Eventually, I realised I couldn't spend the rest of my life stuck in Groundhog Day.

France gave me the opportunity to step away from that.

Our lifestyle here is completely different from our Australian one. We live a very simple, almost deliberately frugal life.

We buy secondhand furniture. We grow our own vegetables. We mend things rather than replacing them. If I want a new crockery set, I'll go to the local brocante and find a beautiful vintage one.

Even my wine glasses came from an antique shop.

And I love that.

I love that, too and thank you for your honesty. As you say, a raw version of French living isn't always what people sign up for when they move to France. 

What is your favourite time of year?

Without question, autumn and winter.

The Auvergne is famous for its spectacular autumn colours, and every year I still find myself stopping to admire them.

But winter is something else entirely.

When the deep snow arrives, the silence is extraordinary. Walking through the forest with snow covered pines towering above you, with barely a sound anywhere, is both eerie and incredibly beautiful.

Then the sun comes out and the snow turns into a sea of sparkling diamonds.

It is magical.

You are living a life of choice and it sounds special. Am I right? 

I think what makes my life here so special is something incredibly simple.

For the first time in years, I was able to exhale.

I could drop my shoulders.

I could stop worrying about keeping up with everyone else and simply be content with the world immediately around me.

There is no pressure here to have the newest phone, the biggest television or the latest whatever. Nobody really cares what material possessions you have.

I'm surrounded by forests and crop fields. I have my wonderful husband, my dogs, my workshop, my old farmhouse and a very simple life.

And I have discovered that I don't actually need much more than that.

We only get one shot at this life.

So my advice would be: be uncomfortable. Be a little crazy. Follow the dream you've been thinking about for years.

Make it happen.

If you're determined enough, you'll find a way.

Sometimes you just need to throw caution to the wind and say yes.

And that's exactly what we did when we bought those two one way tickets from Brisbane to France.

Thanks so much, Sarah-Jane. You recount your story with such passion, which I am sure transfers itself into your jewellery. I look forward to staying in touch. 

To follow Sarah-Jane’s journey, view her wonderful creations and support her business, head to Instagram here, Facebook here or Sarah's website here

PS If you have just found your way to me,  here are the links to all my books: French series Italian series

And, as always, you can find me on Instagram here.