Orianne Collins – A Woman of Courage and Charity

BY JOAN S. PECK

I was fortunate to be invited to a private event at Berger & Sons Fine Jewelers at the Fashion Show Mall to meet Orianne Collins, designer of OC Jewellery. I barely had a chance to say hello to her as she soon became swarmed with people who wanted an opportunity to speak with her. Luckily, I was able to arrange for a time to interview Orianne, not for her beautiful, high-end jewelry but for the two non-profit organizations she heads—one of which was formed after she was paralyzed from the neck down.

Two days later, I was delighted when speaking with Orianne Collins (formerly married to Phil Collins) to find her friendly, open, and down to earth as we talked about her life.

She was born and raised in Nyon, Switzerland. Her father was Swiss, and her mother from Thailand. She said that growing up with her parents from two different continents made it difficult at times for her since she didn’t necessarily fit in Switzerland or Thailand. However, she adored her parents.

Her father was known as “The Tall Blond” and was a contractor constructing buildings, schools, bridges, and more than 750 structures in Switzerland. He was responsible for bringing water to a village in Africa, and his outgoing personality brought out the joy in people, and all loved him.

“My father looked like Steve McQueen, and my son Nicholas looks just like him—enough so that it’s almost eery.”

“I have a wonderful story about how my parents met. My grandfather was one of the first pilots for Air Swiss and flew many of the biggest celebrities to various locations. One of the times he was flying into Thailand, my father went with him. As it turned out, the resort where they stayed was owned by my mother’s aunt, and my mother happened to be there at the same time as my father. While walking the beach, my father came upon her, and when he saw that she had stepped in the sand with fuel, he knelt and helped her cleanse her feet. Later, when he attended dinner that night at the resort, she was there.”

“My grandfather made arrangements for my mother to go to Switzerland and offered her a separate room in the house so she could attend school for three years. He kept my parents apart, and after the three years were up, my parents got together and married.”

Wow, you can’t get more romantic than that! After listening to that beautiful story, it wasn’t easy to get my mind on business, but I was curious to know…

How did you become a jewelry designer?

OC: “I originally wanted to be a fashion designer, but my father was sick with cancer, and I couldn’t leave him to go to Paris or New York. At his urging, I went to school for business and earned my master’s degree in International Management.” [Her father died at the age of 53].

Orianne started her career as the marketing and communication manager for a capital venture company before opening her own events and communications company, O-Com SA, in 1994.

“My passion is wanting to change kids’ lives.” In 1999, Orianne married Phil Collins, and in February 2000, they founded the Little Dreams Foundation and launched it on 24th September 2001 in Geneva.

Little Dreams Foundation Group

Little Dreams Foundation

Its mission is to fulfill the dreams of young talented kids with limited financial means in the world of music, sports, and art by providing mentorship from industry professionals and celebrities. The foundation continues to guide and support the Little Dreamers in their development to ensure they are trained and prepared to perform at the highest level in their chosen field.

Many professional artists, musicians and athletes have been formed through the foundation’s work. With ongoing special projects, a soccer school in Zimbabwe and a tennis and athletic academy in Morocco, they are helping children locally. Now with offices in Belgium, France, Germany, Morocco, Switzerland and the United States, they are closer to the children.

The Foundation aims to make dreams come true for children between the ages of 4 and 16 who have a special gift or talent in athletics or the arts. Every year, the Little Dreams Foundation selects 10 children from throughout the world. These young talents become Foundation members for one year. Throughout the year, each child is evaluated based on his/her progress, motivation, and development in order to determine whether his/her contract with the Foundation will be renewed.

“The Foundations advisers are helping us to create a personalized program for each child based on his/her age, residence, academic background, and, most of all, his/her dream.”

Advisers monitor, accompany, and assess the children on a monthly basis throughout the year. The godfathers and godmothers of the Little Dreams Foundation select the children and evaluate them at the end of their contract. The selections start every year in September.

Graduates have gone on to attend Berklee College of Music while there are other amazing kids who have succeeded too numerous to mention:

Angelina Green from LDF USA – Miami who received the golden buzzer by Heidi Klum in American Got Talent.
Our former kid who is now an adult Joachim Gerard who won the final of the British Open Wimbledon in a wheelchair event for the first time in his career.
Soufiane Bakkli from Morocco in Athletics who raced in Rome, Italy, and won the Olympic Games.
Our kids Jazzy Rose and Nicole Acosta by passing her American Idol auditions and getting their ticket to Hollywood.
Cindy who won the England Boxing National Amateur Champion 2019 75-81KG.
Caio Collet for his victory of the season in racing cars in Dijon France.

And so many more amazing stories of thousand of kids around the world!

Still curious about her designing jewelery?

An excellent way to expand awareness of the Foundation was for Orianne to design a piece of jewelry for the Little Dreams Foundation that would brand it. She collaborated to create jewelry pieces for the prestigious houses Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier before founding her namesake brand OC Jewellery in 2007. Her first piece for the Foundation was 1500 beautiful bracelets, which immediately sold. Any of her jewelry that sells, a percentage goes to both of her Foundations.

Orianne is a luxury jewelry designer based in Miami who has inherited her passion for discoveries from her mixed Swiss and Thai origins. Traveling throughout the world has left the mark of different cultures, each journey a source of inspiration, rich in symbols, colors and eclectic elements, combining age-old techniques with modern designs.

She has chosen jewelry as the main medium to express her creativity because “it is the most universal form in which inspiration materializes.”

What happened to have you create the Never Give Up Foundation?

Orianne’s compelling story began in 2014 when she suffered a neck injury after a martial arts exhibition in Paris against Jesse Glover, Bruce Lee’s first student. After a seemingly straightforward operation, she woke up paralyzed from the neck down and told she would never walk again.

OC: “It was a terrible time, and I was depressed. I thought, How am I going to pay the bills—my house, insurance, and getting the best treatments? I even considered not continuing my life, but I had my kids and that wouldn’t be fair to them.

“The first three months were the most difficult. I had a nurse 24/7 and had therapy five times a day with no success in moving on my own. Then, three weeks later, my little toe moved, and that’s when I made up my mind that I was going to move everything else—no matter what it took.”

Having to rebuild herself physically and mentally, she made a goal to climb the highest mountain in Switzerland, and trained every day, first using a StairMaster, then walking in a parking garage. In summer 2017, she traveled to Switzerland and completed a week of technical exercises. The day of the climb, the guide announced it was impossible to ascend due to the heavy snowfall, so they made a last-minute decision to climb the next mountain range, the Breithorn, peaking at 13,661 feet. When they arrived at the summit five hours later, she placed two flags – one for Never Give Up and one for the children she supports through her other charity, Little Dreams Foundation.

“I left all my baggage there and came back down free from the pain in my heart. I still have to complete my therapy daily, which is challenging and has instilled discipline in me. If I don’t do it, I regress and I don’t want to be back in a wheelchair, so I push myself every day.”

After her long path to recovery, Orianne founded the Never Give up Foundation [“NGU”] in 2019, so others, less fortunate than her, with spinal cord injuries could receive the relief, care, and support they need through their early days of life-changing treatments. She wanted to guide them and their families on their own journeys toward a better quality of life.

She says, “The first three months of recovery after a spinal cord accident are the most important, and if you have the right treatments, you can save yourself a lot of pain and trauma. I know this first hand because I didn’t have that after my accident. I didn’t have someone offering the best therapy and I could have recovered a lot quicker if I had the support. It’s also very stressful when you’re unable to work and worried about paying your bills. We are there to help cover people’s expenses and support their families so they can focus on their treatment.”

Twenty percent of sales from OC Jewellery & Spa supports the NGU mission and Little Dreams Foundation.

I found myself inspired by Orianne’s courage and her sense of appreciation for life and her role in it as the head of both her Foundations. She believes in taking life day by day, and creating her beautiful jewelry is a way to remind herself and others that life is beautiful. And so it is …