Macha
“I was keen to do something with my hands again,” explains Bernice Kelly, a Brooklyn transplant who worked as a fashion designer for some of the big guys for a decade before tiring of her climb up the corporate ladder’s seemingly endless rungs. “When you become quite senior, you lose a little bit of your creativity,” she elaborates. Hoping to reclaim it, Bernice embarked on a six-week road trip across America and returned to New York ready to get some dirt under her nails.
“One of the things I fell into when I got back was jewelry,” she says. “It felt really satisfying to me, and I was really interested in the technical side of it as well.” So she signed herself up for a spate of classes, and it wasn’t long before her style-minded friends were clamoring for her darkly romantic pieces. Bolstered by their encouragement, Bernice set up shop on Etsy in 2008, christening her newborn line Macha—the Gallic name of her hometown in Ireland.
As her label and its customers grew up, she’s added super-special engagement rings to the mix. “I often say that part of my job is to reduce grown men to tears,” jokes Bernice. “But really, it’s beautiful to create something that people are going to wear for the rest of their lives. I think I’m pretty lucky.” —mattie kahn
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A Peek Inside Hortense Bonneau’s Not-So-Ordinary Jewelry Box
And the minimalist awesomeness that fills it.
Looking inside a jewelry designer’s jewelry box is like sneaking around a chef’s kitchen or snooping at the most-played songs on a musician’s iPod. Of her own style, Hortense Bonneau of Hortense Jewelry says, “I never wear more than one or two pieces at the same time. I’m not trying to be the Christmas tree.” These are the things that make the cut on the reg. —alisha prakash
“The Arrowhead necklace has a triangle and rose cut diamond. I made two versions of this necklace—one small with a round rose-cut diamond and one large with a pear-shape rose-cut diamond. I often wear the large version in solid, white gold.”
“The Wish Me Luck bracelet became my signature. Everything started with this bracelet.”
“I love my Trinity necklace from Cartier. My husband gave this to me when I was pregnant with our daughter Lola. When he gave it to me, he said the three rings will represent Lola, him, and me—our family. No need to say that this necklace will stay with me forever.”
“My mother-in-law gave me this gorgeous rose gold diamond ring two weeks before my wedding. I wear it everyday. It’s a classic design, but the rose gold makes it different and original.”
“This is my boite à bijoux, or jewelry box. It’s handmade in porcelain, and the little leather part on top is from Hermès. The shape is so beautiful. It took me years to find a jewelry box that I really love. The artist’s name is Julie Delmas—she unfortunately moved to India.”
“My other passion is watches. This one is a vintage version Cartier made in 1971, the year I was born. I think it’s nice to wear a watch with one piece of jewelry to keep things simple and elegant.”
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Steven Shein
Long before Steven Shein, who describes himself as the “least fashion-oriented person in the fashion business,” got into jewelry and furniture design, he was a Lego-playing, tree-climbing eight-year old in South Africa. Hold down the fast-forward button for a bit and you’ll whiz past Steven moving to CA with his family, enrolling at University of California in Santa Barbara for philosophy at 18, discovering contemporary art, and switching his major to sculpture. Press pause.
“It was all an accident,” Steven explains of his road to jewelry design. “I was working on an art project that dealt with the body’s engagement with the environment when an instructor suggested I make something wearable. So I made a big, blocky bangle. That was the starting point.”
At 22, Steven moved to Los Angeles and headed to the Art Center to pursue environmental design, where he stumbled across laser-cutting technology and started getting busy with plexiglass. And while alternative materials drew him in, since launching his namesake line in late 2012, Steven has embraced using go-to metals—bronze, silver, and gold—in less-than-classical ways. “Lately, I’ve been playing with sandblasting and have been juxtaposing that against high-polish surfaces,” he says. Yes, the outcome is as cool as it sounds. —alisha prakash
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Tell the Tale: Julia Rubin’s Handed-Down Jewels
I can’t quite pinpoint what exactly makes jewelry so much more personal than a beloved sweater or a pair of shoes, but perhaps it’s the permanence of metal and stones and even plastic—the fact that they don’t wear in the same way fabric or leather do. Maybe it’s because of how a ring hugs your finger, or because of the pleasant but present weight of a pile of bracelets. Jewelry is undeniably there in a way that something like a bag is not.
When I was three years old, my mom took me to get my ears pierced. “She asked me to!” she would later tell my skeptical father. Whether or not that’s true, that’s probably where my jewelry history began. I remember the pink stud hearts of my childhood, as well as the little silver hoops I wore throughout middle school. I received jewelry on birthdays and holidays, but some time around the end of my teen years, I realized I didn’t really like new jewelry. Well, most new jewelry at least.
My pieces can generally be separated into three categories: those that have been handed down, those that I bought while traveling, and those that cost less than $10 and add a bit of levity to my mostly serious-looking stash. The ones that have been handed down are obviously my favorite because jewelry with a story is the best kind.
A few years ago, my great-grandmother passed away and left bags of costume jewelry that the other women in my family had no interest in digging through. You see, Grandma Edie was known for her gaudy style—puff-painted sweatshirts and rings with dangling dice. But I’m not the most understated, so I dove right in and found three watches that I’ve worn every day since. One has an engraved message from my great-grandpa on the back, dated 1944. It is without a doubt the most cherished thing I own.
I also always wear a ring my dad gave my mom during their engagement, as well as one of her now-discarded wedding settings—she likes to switch up rings every few years, though luckily my dad has remained a constant—set with a fake sapphire (great pro tip for old settings, by the way). I have other wonderfully eighties staples courtesy of her, like gold button earrings and a segmented bracelet.
Whenever I visit my parents, I make sure to do a little sweep of my mom’s collection. There’s not much left that she’s willing to part with or that I’m itching to steal, but from time to time I do find a hidden gem. And as adulthood has made it clear I’m not destined to live in the same place as my family, it’s a comfort to have a piece of home—or several—with me at any given moment. —julia rubin
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Of a Kind
Something I’ve learned about myself recently: I’m on board with pretty much anything that resembles an ID bracelet, this Fail creation included. —erica
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Lila Rice
When her painter mother gifted her a pair of jewelry-making pliers at eight years old, Lila Rice Marshall became an elementary schooler with a real skill for fixing best-friend necklaces and making trinkets for her pals. Zip ahead a few years, and Lila forgot all about her knack for crafting and, in 1996, headed west from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to UC Berkeley to study sociocultural anthropology. “I did an interdisciplinary study that focused on ornamentation—the things that we wear and the meanings we assign them,” she says.
Spoiler alert: That coursework helped lead her back to jewelry. “When I graduated college, I couldn’t find a job. I was waiting tables and thinking about grad school when I started doing a little bit of metalsmithing, as a therapeutic outlet,” she explains. In 2001, her dabbling became a line, Round Designs Jewelry, a collection that focused on, well, circles. “I think it’s a very universal thing to be attracted to certain shapes,” Lila explains, but in 2010 she had enough of all those orbs.
Now, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, she embraces angles, making fierce cuffs, geometric hoop earrings, and arrow-accented necklaces her namesake line by hand—just like she did in her recess-crafting days. “I like having a personal connection with every piece, but I also think part of it is that I’m a control freak,” she says. “Honestly, it’s just me being weird by myself in my studio, playing with the materials. I never have a plan of what’s going to happen.” —alisha prakash
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Of a Kind
See dat jewelry madness? Yah, Adina Mills goes big—definitely not home. —erica
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Of a Kind
Yes, Turina makes the crazy-coolest initial jewelry you’ve ever seen. If you aren’t tempted to click through to see what each letter looks like, we don’t relate. —erica
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Gifted Program: Victorian All the Way
What do we think you should gift this season? Something Of a Kind—I mean, OBVIOUSLY. If you’re looking to double-down on the special, we’ve conjured up some stellar present pairings—our “Gifted Program,” if you will—that we’ll be serving up over the next couple weeks. (And ok, fine, if this doesn’t satiate you, we have a slew of ideas up in our Pinterest, too.) —erica
The pairing: The mad-cool Victorian Governess Cuff that Tirana Jewelry made us ($130) + Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, or any of the other Victorian-era classics that Penguin packaged up so nicely ($22)
