Accessories

Swedish Stockings Tights: Recycled, Long-Lasting Basics

Linn Frisinger and Nadja Forsberg founded Swedish Stockings in Stockholm in 2013, after Frisinger watched a documentary on planned obsolescence that used disposable tights as its example. The brand makes hosiery from recycled nylon in a solar-powered factory in Italy and runs a take-back program that grinds old tights, any brand, into material for furniture.

Sophie Thoerner and Vice Versa: The Jewelry Brand She Co-Founded

Sophie Thoerner co-founded Vice Versa with Hannah Traulsen, a Barnard alum with a background in sourcing and production. Thoerner is a Savannah College of Art and Design jewelry graduate, and I go through the 14K yellow gold pieces.

Emm Kuo Bags: Clutches and Handbags by a Parsons Trained Designer

Emm Kuo is the handbag and accessories label of Emmaline Kuo Ranzman, a Parsons trained designer who grew up between Taipei, Hawaii, New York and Hong Kong before launching her own line in New York after working for Catherine Malandrino and Stephen Burrows. The specific thing that makes it hers is the global material sourcing, with evening bags handmade in studios in the Philippines under sustainability practices like natural dyeing and water conservation.

Jade Ruzzo Jewelry

Jade Ruzzo launched her eponymous fine jewelry line in New York in 2022, after a decade working at Conde Nast titles and as a personal stylist. The specific thing that drives the collection is family: pieces are named for and inspired by her late father Vic, a drummer, and her daughter Gloria, born in 2019, with the Percussion collection built directly around his cymbals and drum motifs.

Rene Barnes Jewelry

Rene Barnes launched her eponymous fine jewelry line in May 2022, working out of Charleston, South Carolina, with pieces cast in New York City. Every design starts with Barnes hand-sculpting wax herself before it goes through lost-wax casting, so the resulting pieces keep a slightly irregular, hand-carved quality rather than a machine-perfect finish.

Mindi Mond: New York Fine Jewelry Founded in 2009

Mindi Mond founded her eponymous fine jewelry line in New York in 2009, after a career as a fashion merchandiser in the city's garment district. She started by buying antique and estate gems and finished pieces specifically to take them apart and rework them into new designs, a habit of repurposing that became the brand's working method before she launched her original Clarity Collection in 2012.

Nak Armstrong Jewelry

Nak Armstrong trained as an architect at the University of Texas before a detour into New York fashion led him back to Austin, where a textile company he ran with a partner pivoted into jewelry by the late 1990s under the name Anthony Nak. After that partnership ended around 2009, Armstrong spent two years developing a new direction and launched his eponymous label in 2011, quickly picked up by Barneys New York and Bergdorf Goodman.

Gemella Jewels: Twin Sisters and Third-Generation Jewelers

Gemella Jewels is run by twin sisters Anna and Rachel Aschendorf out of New York, third-generation jewelers whose grandparents Fred and Stella built a jewelry business from scratch after surviving the Holocaust, eventually settling in the German jewelry town of Pforzheim. The sisters trained properly first, GIA and Diamond District certifications between them, before naming the label Gemella, Italian for twin, and leaning on the bezel settings their grandmother favored back in the 1950s rather than chasing whatever stone cut is trending.

Judith Leiber Couture Bags

Judith Leiber, a Budapest-trained handbag maker who survived the Nazi occupation and emigrated to New York in 1947, started her own company there in 1963 after twelve years working for designer Nettie Rosenstein. A shipment of poorly plated brass frames pushed her to cover the flaws in crystals, and that fix became the house's signature minaudière, the small, sculptural evening bag later carried by numerous First Ladies.

Savette Bags

Amy Zurek founded Savette in New York in 2020, after studying art history and fashion design at Parsons, then working at The Row and building Khaite's handbag line from scratch alongside founder Cate Holstein. She named the label after her mother's maiden name and built its design language around two women, her mother's classic taste in leather goods and her grandmother's eye for sculptural jewelry.

UGG

Brian Smith, an Australian surfer studying business at UCLA, founded Ugg Imports in Santa Monica in 1978 with Doug Jensen, betting that the sheepskin boots Australians wore after cold surf sessions could find an American market. The company sold just 28 pairs its first season, and Smith kept building the brand himself, including selling boots out of the back of his van at Malibu, before selling it to Deckers Outdoor Corporation in 1995.

CANO Jewelry

CANO began as a family obsession, not a fashion label: in Bogotá, Guillermo Cano trained as a goldsmith in Germany before opening a boutique in 1968 to recreate the pre-Columbian gold pieces his grandfather Nemesio had unearthed decades earlier. Its defining fact is a license, not a trend: CANO is the only jewelry house authorized by the Banco de la República's Gold Museum to reproduce pieces from its collection, using the same lost-wax casting the original goldsmiths used.

Haute Victoire

Yasmina Benazzou spent over two decades as global creative director at the carpet house Tai Ping before signing up for an evening jewelry-making class in New York at 45, which led her to found Haute Victoire. The name means high victory in French, chosen because launching the label felt like a personal win after years spent designing something else entirely, and her debut collections were worked in 18k gold set with Tahitian pearls, Persian turquoise and stones pulled from flea-market brooches.

Tabayer Oera Diamond Rings and Jewelry in 18K Gold

The Tabayer 18kt yellow gold Oera diamond ring comes from Oera, the collection that launched the brand in 2021. I go through the Oera, Loop and Signet pieces and the Miami founder's story.

Lié Studio: Copenhagen Jewelry and Bags From Twin Sisters

Lié Studio was founded in Copenhagen in November 2021 by twin sisters Amalie and Cecilie Moosgaard, former runway models who had walked for Gucci, Valentino and Prada before building their own label with business partners at Brand Institute. The specific thing that makes the brand what it is: a small set of core minimalist gold and silver jewelry pieces, designed by two people who by their own account were not natural jewelry buyers before they started making it themselves.

ILA Dresses and Jewelry

ILA was founded in Houston in 2007 by Vikas Sodhani, an MIT engineering graduate who left the dot-com industry, apprenticed at a diamond-cutting facility in Mumbai, and taught himself to design jewelry from there. The label is named for his sister Ila Sodhani, who joined as design collaborator, and it still makes every piece by hand in that same Houston studio, drawing on a family already steeped in the diamond trade.

Lemaire Bags

Christophe Lemaire founded his label in Paris in 1991, put it on pause for a stint at Lacoste, then relaunched it in 2007 before Sarah-Linh Tran joined as co-artistic director in 2010 and the two rebranded it simply as Lemaire. After years spent refining wearable, unfussy silhouettes rather than headline grabbing ones, the house is now known for a crescent shaped bag and a design language people describe as quiet luxury.

Jenna Blake Jewelry

Jenna Grosfeld launched her namesake fine jewelry label, Jenna Blake, in Los Angeles after building a personal collection of antique pieces for two decades. The work is handcrafted in LA and takes its cues from Art Deco and mid-century jewelers, including Boucheron and René Boivin, reworked in color and scale for a stack-it-all-on approach rather than a single statement piece.

Sauer Jewelry

Jules Sauer, a French teenager who fled Europe in 1939, arrived in Brazil and opened his own gem-cutting business, Lapidação Amsterdam, in Rio de Janeiro in 1941, later becoming known as a gemstone hunter for his role in certifying Brazilian emeralds internationally. He opened the brand's first standalone store on Avenida Atlântica beside the Copacabana Palace in 1956, and the house's Constellation ring won a Diamond International Award in 1966 and is still produced today.

Jamie Wolf Jewelry: A Former Ballet Dancer's 18K Gold Designs

Jamie Wolf grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side and spent about a decade dancing professionally with the New York City Ballet before she left the stage to design jewelry full time, a hobby she had kept up during off-seasons since around 2001. She works mainly in 18k gold set with precious and semi-precious stones, made in New York City, on the belief that femininity is timeless and beauty lives in the finest details.

Heaven Mayhem Jewelry

Pia Mance started Heaven Mayhem in Los Angeles in 2022 with a small amount of starting capital, hand-tying cord necklaces from vintage pendants she sourced herself and packing every order alone. A chance run-in with Hailey Bieber at an LA coffee shop in 2023 turned the brand's earrings into a recurring celebrity fixture and pushed it into wider retail.

Julietta Jewelry

Juliana Liden, a Brazil-born, Brooklyn-based self-taught designer, launched Julietta in 2021 after an earlier hair-accessories line failed to catch on. She pivoted to jewelry in 2022, hand-painting and reworking a stash of deadstock 1980s components into sculptural, earth- and sea-themed pieces that Moda Operandi picked up as its first global stockist.

Renato Cipullo Jewelry

Renato Cipullo was born in Naples and grew up in Rome in a family of jewelers, later opening a boutique on Ischia in 1967 before settling in New York, where his brother Aldo designed Cartier's Love bracelet. He launched his own jewelry collection in 1974, drawing on years spent by the sea for motifs in shell, coral and gold that still recur in his work.

Fiametta: Lab-Grown Diamond Jewelry by Merill Hollander

Merill Hollander founded Fiametta in New York in 2023 after a career that started at Bloomingdale's buying desk and ran through a Wharton MBA. The label works exclusively in lab-grown diamonds and frames itself as a rewrite of fine jewelry's rulebook, drawing openly on Hollander's experience as a queer woman deciding which traditions to keep and which to drop.