Summer 2019 in jewellery is a quieter, more confident category than it was even two years ago. The big runway-statement chunk of the mid-decade has retreated; what’s replaced it is a generation of small American houses making demi-fine and fine pieces that are simpler, softer, and meant to live on a single body for years rather than weeks. The big stories of the season are the same ones reshaping the rest of the luxury space — independent, founder-led brands building real businesses around a clear point of view, often woman-owned, often built on direct relationships with their customers. We sat down with our small jewellery box, swapped out the long pendants for shorter chains and a single sturdy ring, and went looking for the houses we wanted to grow with.
Sophie Buhai and the new American minimalism
If one designer was getting talked about across every fashion editor’s June pull list, it was Sophie Buhai. The LA-based label had spent the back half of the 2010s building a deeply specific aesthetic — sterling silver and vermeil pieces with the heft and presence of antique pieces but the silhouettes of contemporary objects. The brand’s classic Round Earrings and the Chain Necklaces were the demonstrations of the thesis: jewellery as quiet sculpture, sized for an actual neckline. Buhai herself had been an early voice in the broader 2010s shift toward considered, slow design, and her summer 2019 lookbook felt like the natural endpoint of where high-minimal jewellery had been going for ten years. We saved up for one Round Earring, wore it daily, and called it the start of the collection.
Catbird’s Brooklyn moment
Catbird in summer 2019 was peaking as the cult Brooklyn jewellery destination. The Williamsburg storefront had become a destination shop for engagement rings, the indie wedding-band line had been imitated by half the demi-fine market, and the in-house designs — particularly the Sweet Nothing Ring and the threaded chain necklaces — were the entry-level fine purchases that built collections. The brand’s whole proposition was a refreshing alternative to the De Beers grammar of legacy jewellers: smaller, repeatable, made-in-Brooklyn pieces that were meant to be stacked, worn together, and added to. Their commitment to ethical sourcing and recycled gold also kept landing ahead of where the wider category needed to be. Summer wedding season was Catbird’s Super Bowl, and 2019 it really delivered.
Foundrae and signet rings with stories
Of all the small American fine houses building real cultural momentum in 2019, Foundrae had perhaps the strongest narrative engine. The brand, founded in 2015 by Beth Bugdaycay, had built a deeply considered system of symbols — signet rings, medallion necklaces, and chain bracelets, each tied to a specific meaning or virtue. The summer 2019 collection extended the language with new motifs and softer colorways. The whole brand pitch was that jewellery should mean something specific to the wearer rather than be a generic luxury good, and that thesis was meeting an audience that had grown tired of statement pieces with nothing to say. By summer 2019, Foundrae was on the racks at Bergdorf and Net-a-Porter, and the medallion-on-a-thick-chain look was Foundrae’s contribution to what the season was actually wearing.
Mejuri and the demi-fine democratization
The other big momentum story of summer 2019 was Mejuri, the Toronto-based direct-to-consumer label that had spent the back half of the decade making the case for affordable demi-fine jewellery as an everyday wardrobe staple rather than a special-occasion purchase. Their thesis — that women buy jewellery for themselves, not just receive it as gifts — felt obvious in retrospect but was actually new in the marketing language of jewellery. The brand had been opening small US stores through 2018-2019, and the dome rings, croissant rings, and slim chain stackers were the entry-level fine purchases for an entire generation of millennial professionals. They were not trying to compete with Cartier; they were quietly redefining the idea that the everyday-wear jewellery you bought yourself should still be made from real gold and real stones.
Loren Stewart and Wwake on the watch list
Two more names worth paying attention to as summer 2019 rolled out. Loren Stewart kept making the kind of beautifully proportioned LA fine jewellery that worked on a single bare hand or layered into a stack — her signet rings and substantial gold hoops were among the season’s most-photographed editorial pieces. Wwake, the Brooklyn-based studio led by designer Wing Yau, kept building the other end of the demi-fine conversation: airy, asymmetric, opal-and-diamond constructions that felt nothing like the heritage grammar of older fine houses. Both were quietly being collected by editors and the kind of customer who reads ten newsletters before buying a chain. Both were the future of the category. We added them to the wishlist and started shopping. The pieces from this entire generation of designers tend to share an underlying instinct — that good jewellery is closer to architecture than fashion, made from materials that earn their keep, and shaped to live on real bodies in real lives.
What we are watching for the rest of summer: how Mejuri’s US retail footprint expands; whether the demi-fine direct-to-consumer model gets imitated by major prestige players the way the skincare DTC playbook has been; the next Foundrae motif drop; and the August lookbooks from the smaller LA studios, which are usually where fall taste gets set early. We will see you on the first Tuesday of July for the regular monthly, and we will be back here on the third Tuesday of December for the winter jewellery roundup.