Discover How Marla Aaron Has Unlocked The Future Of Fine Jewelry
New York designer MARLA AARON has created a joyous universe of innovative locks, chains and charms that inspires and enables a personalized curation beyond compare…
Marla Aaron is wearing nothing but frilled bikini bottoms and several knee-length strings of pearls in the photo she shares of herself. She’s just two years old in the shot, but it serves as a visual reminder of her lifelong love of jewelry. “For me, it has always been jewelry – not fine, not costume, not precious… It’s all just jewelry to me, and I have been obsessed with it for as long as I can remember,” she explains. “I feel I can remember turning everything into jewelry. Nothing has changed.”
She founded her fine-jewelry label, Marla Aaron, in 2012, spurred by a fascination – no, obsession – with making things. “Even when I worked in marketing and advertising, I was making jewelry, studying jewelry, obsessing about jewelry. I was very taken with the idea of convertible jewelry, and I began making it, experimenting with carabiners and claspless chains,” Aaron explains. She began to spend each lunch hour on 47th street, in the heart of New York’s jewelry district, trying to figure out how to get her locks made, and soon began sharing them with family and friends. “Once I realized that we could morph the shape of the lock itself, it opened an entire world to me and gave me a never-ending fountain of ideas.”
“Jewelry’s only job is to bring joy. I say that so often that we put it on the napkins in our office
”Marla Aaron
That fountain springs eternal. Today, Aaron’s offering includes hundreds of locks, charms, and chains, along with bracelets, earrings, and rings with convertible and interchangeable details. Each piece encapsulates Aaron’s playful approach to design, and the fun doesn’t stop there: rather than displaying her jewels in cold, clean vitrines, Aaron’s stores are kitted out with imaginative, articulated boxes that allow customers to explore and hunt out new pieces in an unexpected way. Recently, Aaron has translated these much-loved boxes into a version her customers can take home – ‘The Everything Box’, which unfolds to reveal hidden compartments and surprise treasures. “Jewelry’s only job is to bring joy. I say that so often that we put it on the napkins in our office,” quips Aaron. “Nobody needs what we make, and I am acutely aware of this fact. It is 100% about desire. And fun.”
That’s not to say that Aaron isn’t a serious – and seriously talented – designer. Recently nominated for the Jewelry Design category in the 2024 Gem Awards (one of the industry’s most highly prized accolades), connoisseurs acknowledge that when it comes to the creative process, few match Aaron’s eclectic curation, and modern, technical ingenuity. Inspired by antique jewelry from every era, industrial landscapes, and “the way stuff works”, her signature earring design, which allows drops to be switched with a swift click, was the result of a eureka moment at a zip-line park. “I was on a zip line one day with my children, and seeing the way that we ‘clicked in’ to different sections of the line gave me the idea for how our mechanism could work,” she explains. Indeed, it’s this function-meets-fashion ethos that has become Aaron’s signature: “Many of our pieces carry the same story – they are a transformation of some form of functionality into something playful and wearable,” she says.
“Myriad locks and charms feature precious gems and detailed enameling, all designed to harmoniously chime with each other
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It is this joyfulness that offers such extreme scope for personalization. Aside from the prototyping stage, Aaron’s favorite part of her job is getting the chance to see customers realize the possibilities of her jewelry in their own way. Take Aaron’s ‘Trundle Lock’ ring, which functions as both lock and ring, opening with a gentle but technically marvelous push that allows it to close a chain, hang charms and be worn in a multitude of ways. Chains can be layered in any combination of yellow, rose, white gold or blackened silver, intermixed with strands of vibrant beads and pearls, while myriad locks and charms feature precious gems and detailed enameling, all designed to harmoniously chime with each other.
Aaron has created an entire universe of inimitable, immediately identifiable pieces, but she insists this is not a ‘brand’. “While this may be what we are to the world, to me it’s just a project that happens to be going particularly well. If I think about it as a project, it feels like we can experiment more; that there is room for our mistakes. In the mistakes is the magic – and we are nowhere near done.”