QUESTION:  What inspired you to start The Finest Stack? What is the story behind the name, The Finest Stack?  

Annika:  When I was six, it was discovered I had a birth defect and I spent a year in the hospital having surgery and then learning how to walk again.   It was pretty traumatic, but I had my crayons and my fashion plates and my imagination.  Art and creating things gave me comfort and my attraction to color and design and art has never left me.  

As a result of that, I was determined to become a physical therapist—mainly due to my own healing journey, but also because I really feel that my purpose is to love and to heal. But all the while working as a therapist, I stayed close to art and color and design and fashion—working in art galleries, clothing boutiques, designing clothes (sometimes using bugs as dyes!), and then eventually creating my own jewelry.

Then, in 2016, my Dad died, and I went into a tailspin. Those were some very dark days, and I remember asking myself repeatedly: What am I even doing here? Why are we all here?

Nature became my sanctuary.  Specifically, being outside and staring at the clouds.  I was struck by the vastness outside, the impermanence, and the one definite in life is change.  I was comforted by watching the clouds shift, break, transform, how they would change color but were always moving forward.  They were different, but still moving forward.   We are so much like nature and we are all part of something bigger.   I remember realizing that the same forces that move the clouds are the same forces that create us.   Our lives and our stories make us interesting, story-filled, captivating beings, and we are all struggling along together, and we are all FINE:  F*cked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotionally unavailable.   So that is how the word "fine" came into play:  as a double entendre.  And I wanted to create something beautiful from that darkness; to make a tribute by using the finest materials the earth has to offer in recognition of the chaos, depth, and light within us all.  Like those clouds, we constantly change yet maintain our presence and our unique beauty, resilient and enduring.  

So this is a tribute to us all.  Through our darkness, we keep moving forward, changing, and holding onto our light.  Even when we forget it is there, it there.  And so we find it, stack it, and let it shine.  This is jewelry from the inside out—your light, made visible.