Not your mother's jewelry.

"I don't base anything in my life on sexuality," says Trisha Alkaitis. Along with former lover Jelena Behrend, Alkaitis runs Titanium Studios, a rising jewelry company that's frank about its lesbian origins--and also about its appeal to gays, straights, and everyone in between. "We've had great response from the gay community," says Alkaitis. "But our jewelry's not for everyone there. And I wouldn't say that it appeals only to gay people. My parents are straight, and they wear my jewelry."

Titanium is just a year old, but already the studio's numbered editions and custom pieces have drawn a boldly stylish gay and straight clientele in New York City, where Alkaitis handles sales, and in Los Angeles, where Behrend fabricates the jewelry. The partners sell their chunky rings, pendants, and handmade chains--which cost anywhere from $100 to $3,600--in both Los Angeles and New York, in such exclusive shops as Maxfield, Fred Segal, Swell, Big Drop, and Barneys. Although their initial customers were gay and lesbian friends ("Who else is going to support you first but family?" says Behrend), they're now accessorizing celebrities like rockers Leisha Hailey of the Murmurs and Lenny Kravitz. Titanium's jewelry is even de rigueur for famous babies: Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, Madonna's infant, wears it, does Rosie O'Donnell's little boy, Parker.

Titanium specializes not in titanium but in silver--particularly 925 sterling, a "more pure, soft" element, as Behrend describes it. That softness is juxtaposed with the oversize, in-your-face scale of many of the studio's pieces, which are often playfully emblazoned with banal but provocative slogans such as ONE DAY ONLY, FREE TRIAL OFFER, GOOD LUCK, and even HOMO (which appeared on a thick bar necklace that Titanium donated as a fund-raising item to last year's Outfest, Los Angeles's gay and lesbian film festival).

"I want to make these pieces look like tattoos or talismans," says Behrend, 30. "I pick positive messages, though. When I wear MY GOOD LUCK necklace on the street, people smile and say `Good luck!' back to me."

Behrend and Alkaitis bring an international sensibility to their work. Behrend grew up in Serbia, writing poetry and watching her Gypsy friends engrave gold and wear strings of ducats around their necks. She moved to the United States in 1988 and subsequently lived in London and New York, where she met Alkaitis at a jewelry store where they both worked.

Alkaitis is Dutch-American, though her last name is that of her Lithuanian stepfather. Now 31, she followed her peripatetic scientist dad and artist mom all over America and Europe before settling in New York. There she met Behrend, and sparks, both professional and personal, flew. The pair split up romantically last November after three years, but their business partnership is thriving.

If sexuality figures into their designs, they say, it's only along metaphorical lines: Titanium's jewelry requires wearers to come out of the fashion closet and strut their adornment. That goes for lipstick lesbians, sensible-shoed dykes, gay boys of all stripes, and straight folks drawn to Titanium's feel-free-to-standout aesthetic.

Says Behrend: "There's definitely a very confident-woman look to our jewelry, even if the woman is straight. Gay men admire it too. We simply offer something we believe will please people visually, physically, and sensually. It's then for others to reflect on its beauty and meaning."