Steven Lagos finds new design challenges exciting and is always looking to push himself out of his comfort zone. Lagos’ newest design, Smart Caviar, did just that. The project combined old-world skills of jewelry design with new technology to create bands for smartwatches that are not only beautiful but also wearable. We caught up with Lagos to talk innovation in the industry.

How did you begin the process of becoming the first designer to create a fine jewelry bracelet for the Apple Watch?

I started developing Smart Caviar over two years ago. I’m a big fan of the Apple Watch. I think it’s perfectly designed as a casual, sports watch and I love the functionality, but I wanted to offer women the option to transform their Apple Watch into a piece of fine jewelry.

I studied the Apple Watch design and reviewed their vendor specs and started thinking about how my signature Caviar designs could seamlessly integrate into the product.

What was the most challenging part of bringing together the worlds of technology and jewelry design?

Bringing technology into jewelry design wasn’t the challenging part. I’ve always been fascinated by innovation and constantly look for ways to improve our design processes and product offering. The challenge was taking an external product that I felt was perfectly designed, and inserting my own point of view. I needed to take existing technology and make it wearable and beautiful with the right look and feel. The final result – Smart Caviar – is a very LAGOS interpretation of the Apple Watch.

How has being an innovator helped to strengthen and differentiate your brand?

I like taking chances and pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. I’m an early adopter when it comes to technology, always looking for innovative solutions that help differentiate our brand.

I take old world skills and use technology to enhance them. That allows us to offer a lot of newness to our customer as well as jewelry that not only looks beautiful, but that also fits perfectly and is comfortable to wear.

Technology is playing such a pertinent role in so many different industries, how do you see it impacting the jewelry business?

The fundamentals haven’t changed. We’ve taken technology and used it to enhance old world craftsmanship. The handwork is still there because it’s what makes the jewelry unique, but now, we’re able to enhance it with innovative techniques to accelerate the quality of our product and create things we couldn’t achieve before.

How did your approach to designing this project differentiate from other projects?

This is the first time I designed a piece to fit into an external product like this. It was a challenge I enjoyed. I’m a mix of right and left brain so I’m focused on both the aesthetics and engineering for all my collections, but that was especially important for Smart Caviar. While this is something different for us, it’s really just the next evolution of Caviar.

Smart Caviar is not approved, endorsed or affiliated with Apple, Inc. Watch sold separately.