Q&A With X Over 0: Designers Of The ‘Uglies’ Geoheart Pendant

Katherine Voorhies and Duane McLemore always had an infinite pool of pent-up creative energy. It’s what inspired them to expand their fashion and architectural backgrounds, respectively, and start their Mississippi-based jewelry company X over 0. 

For over eight years, the duo crafted necklaces, earrings and bracelets that showcased their intricate and geometrical designs, inspired by the meeting point of the practicality their industries have instilled in them, along with their internal whimsy and creativity. Their tireless drive to create cutting-edge and abstract pieces led to the creation of the Geoheart pendant — a sterling-silver, 3d-printed dagger caged inside a multi-dimensional, congruous heart — which caught the attention of costume designers for the recently released Netflix movie Uglies.

In the film based on the book of the same name by Scott Westerfeld, main character Tally’s (Joey King) signature necklace plays an important role in her development and journey — and is even the subject of a surprise plot twist at the end. It is brought up countless times in the novel;  Voorhies filled her own copy with hundreds of sticky notes marking each mention. It’s clear that Tally’s necklace is an extremely important device in the Uglies stories, and both Voorhies and McLemore were more than honored to have their work selected to represent it in the film.

X over 0 has been working tirelessly to promote the Geoheart pendant in anticipation of its appearance in Uglies, and sat down with us to answer some questions about how this came to be in the first place. 

Alli Dempsey: In your own words, how did X / O come to be? 

Katherine Voorhies: I started out in fashion design as an assistant designer, did a little bit of wardrobe styling for commercials, and then I ended up doing graphic design for a high profile gift and stationery company. But in those positions, I was always tasked with ‘play it safe, risk averse’ things. We both felt like we had a lot more energy inside of us than we had an outlet.

Duane McLemore: We really had a creative itch to scratch. We wanted something that would make an impact, not just basic cookie-cutter stuff, that we could use to drive our exploration of advanced fabrication. I had always been interested in computational design, and we found that the kind of landscape of the body which Katherine knew so well and the kind of architectural tools for generating patterns I was familiar with was a good fit. We also were interested in printing, so I built a 3D printer kit from the ground up, understanding what every little screw did. 

Dempsey: What’s your drafting process like? 

Voorhies: Our process start-to-finish can look a number of different ways. Oftentimes I know exactly what I want it to look like; I just can’t communicate it. Once we have the idea, we’re trying to communicate it to each other in the most efficient means possible. Sometimes that’s a pencil sketch, or grabbing some type of clay and starting to make a model, or doing it in digital play in our 3D modeling program. Sometimes our sketches are specific, and then other times they’re very abstract. 

McLemore: We kind of work both ways, from thinking about a piece and a place on the body and a weight — what heft that the piece ought to have. We work from the top down sometimes, and then other times, from the bottom up, where, where I make a pattern, because I’m just a pattern nerd, and because we understand that certain patterns kind of afford certain possibilities. Something that has a certain pattern might wrap around a corner really well, and another might not. A lot of what we do is looking at what is missing. We ask, “Where is there an avenue that is maybe under explored?”

Dempsey: And how did that play out specifically when designing the Geoheart pendant? 

McLemore: The idea of finding a gap in the market is really what led to Geoheart.

Voorhies: We wanted to do a heart pendant for Valentine’s Day. The rest of our line is more geometric than referential, so I really felt like we needed a heart shaped-piece, but our own take on it. Most of our line is in clear blue waters, where we’re pretty sure no one else is fishing. To do a heart pendant design, you’re going straight into the red waters that every other seller is in. 

We did a load of research to make sure that what we had in mind was not already out there, and it was not in the slightest. We’re still happy to say that this is quite a unique piece.

Dempsey: How did the Uglies production find the Geoheart and reach out to you?

Voorhies: It was just completely organic. They just found us online, and the costume designer contacted us through our website’s contact form. This was in the middle of the pandemic, so there were supply shortages, and really tight deadlines that they wanted it delivered by. So we were like, “we will try to make this happen, we will do everything we can.” We were holding our breath. We made many more pieces than they ordered for it, just because you never knew. 

Dempsey: On an X / 0 Instagram post, you said that “Tally’s heart pendant is integral to the plot and is symbolic of her central conflict.” How do you think this is expressed in the Geohart design?

Voorhies: I think anyone familiar with the series and our product line will see that this is a good fit, and that our pendant really suits the sci-fi, futuristic world. In the Uglies book, Westerfeld uses architecture to differentiate between the sex within society. He talks about Uglyville and having a brutalist, heavy, kind of oppressive architecture, and then New Pretty Town has soaring lights and skyscrapers. And our Geoheart pendant was actually inspired by Art Deco architecture. 

McLemore: I think what we did there is illustrative of our general design methodology. We tried to make this direct connection between the kind of the thing that we’re making and the ideas behind it. When we saw Dr. Cable’s (Laverne Cox) desk in the teaser stuff they put out, there’s this purely geometric object on there that’s like a polyhedron. And that’s when we could tell that when the art direction and fashion teams were working together to build the design profile of Dr Cable, there was a reason they went to us.

Dempsey: I read in your artist bio that you want your jewelry to “start conversations.” What conversations do you want to start when people see the necklace worn in Uglies? 

Voorhies: When you wear a necklace, you’re not just wearing an object, you’re wearing a story. 

McLemore: If you’re a 35-year-old mom who grew up reading this book and you’ve got a 10-year-old kid, you can share that with your kid and talk about what the movie does. You can bring up valuing yourself, not not thinking you’re lesser than and knowing that you’re enough. To be able to share that between generations as somebody who identified with Tally is so important. They recognize, even if just subconsciously, the pendant as a marker, as a totem of her internal conflict. And I’m sure they come back to that in their life, and they understand what that means even more. 

Voorhies: I don’t think anyone graduates from that struggle fully, like it always kind of pops its ugly head back into life every once in a while.

McLemore: And so to be able to do that for someone and host those kinds of internal conversations that say, ‘This is a thing that is a reminder that there will always be struggles, and that it’s okay to be stuck between our past and our future,’ is so special. 

Thank you to Katherine Voorhies and Duane McLemore for taking the time to talk with us.

The Geoheart Pendant is available for purchase on the X / 0 website. 

Uglies is now available for streaming on Netflix.