Accessories
Accessories
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.
Jia Jia Jewelry
Jia Jia was founded in February 2020 by Jia-Jia Zhu, a former fashion buyer at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue who left retail to study yoga and crystals in Bali before turning that interest into a jewelry line. The brand's signature is raw, uncut and unpolished crystal set into 14k and 18k gold, a deliberately unfinished look that treats the stone as the whole point rather than something to be smoothed over.
Sylvia Toledano Jewelry
Sylvia Toledano grew up in Paris with a childhood spent partly in Africa, studied law, then trained in style and sculpture before launching her own jewelry line around 2007 or 2008. She calls her aesthetic neo-vintage, pieces handmade in patinated, textured gilded brass and set with semi-precious stones, and her boutique still sits near Place Vendôme on rue Danielle Casanova.
Marie Mas Jewelry
Marie Mas was founded in Paris in January 2017 by Marie Cabirou, who trained at the Ecole Duperre and the Institut Francais de la Mode before spending several years designing jewelry under Raf Simons at Christian Dior Couture. She named the house after her maternal grandmother, Henriette Mas, and built its identity around a patented technique that lets a stone physically swing between two settings, an idea she traces to watching Christmas tree worms move underwater.
Cult Gaia Bags and Dresses
Jasmin Larian started Cult Gaia in 2012, making flower crowns and wired-fabric headbands for friends around New York while she was training at FIT. The label found its real signature in the bamboo Ark bag, a sculptural, unmistakable shape that turned a slow-burning accessory into one of the decade's most photographed bags and pushed the brand into ready-to-wear, footwear and eventually bridal.
Janessa Leone
Janessa Leone launched her eponymous hat line in Los Angeles in 2013, funded with personal savings from years of nannying while she considered law school. The origin story is oddly literal: on a trip to Paris she bought a vintage men's hat, opened the sweatband, and found the milliner's surname stitched inside, the same as her own.
Moncler Grenoble: Vests, Jackets and Mountain Wear
Moncler was founded in 1952 in Monestier-de-Clermont, a mountain village near Grenoble, France, by René Ramillon and André Vincent, originally making sleeping bags and tents for high-altitude workers before down jackets followed. The Grenoble name commemorates 1968, when Moncler outfitted the French downhill ski team at the Grenoble Winter Olympics, and the Grenoble line itself later launched as a dedicated technical collection built for the slopes and apres-ski rather than city streets.