Independent jewellery had its strongest year in a decade in 2022. The big houses kept doing what big houses do, but the conversations on the fashion-week front rows, in the editorial pages, and on the wrists of the people we paid attention to were dominated by smaller designers — most of them women-founded, most of them building businesses around personal storytelling and a single recognizable visual language. We spent December putting together our year-end jewellery roundup with a focus on the independents we kept seeing, wearing, and saving for. These are the names and pieces that defined the close of 2022.
Foundrae and the year of meaningful symbols
Foundrae had been quietly building a cult following since Beth Bugdaycay launched the brand in 2015, but 2022 was the year it crossed the threshold from in-the-know to broadly known. The brand’s vocabulary — heavy gold medallions engraved with a tight library of meanings, layered on rope chains, paired with charms in the shape of celestial bodies and hourglass keys — became the year’s defining narrative jewellery aesthetic. The price point was serious (medallions started around $4,500 and climbed) but the case for cost-per-wear was easy to make on pieces designed to be everyday personal anchors.
The cultural moment around personal symbolism in jewellery was bigger than Foundrae alone. Mejuri and Catbird were translating the idea downward to more accessible price points with their own takes on charm necklaces and signet rings. The throughline was that 2022 wanted jewellery that meant something — birthstones, charms tied to children’s names, monograms, signet engravings — over jewellery that simply looked good.
Sophie Bille Brahe and the Scandinavian pearl moment
The pearl had been making a slow return for several years, but 2022 was the year it became unavoidable, and the designer most associated with the moment was Copenhagen-based Sophie Bille Brahe. Her brand’s signature is freshwater pearls strung in delicate, off-kilter arrangements — single pearls on a hair-thin chain, asymmetrical earrings of pearl and 18-karat gold, the now-iconic Botticelli ring — and the aesthetic translated perfectly into the year’s wider preference for quiet luxury.
Around her, a wider Scandinavian-influenced moment was settling into the US market. Jenny Bird‘s Toronto-based label kept the more accessible end of the conversation alive with mid-priced pearl pieces, and a wave of small Etsy makers translated the look further down. The pearl was officially back, and the version of it that was winning was Northern European, not Mediterranean — clean, asymmetric, restrained.
Anita Ko, Brent Neale, and the LA-NY axis
The two designers we kept seeing on the same red carpets all year were Anita Ko, who has been Hollywood’s quiet diamond go-to for over a decade, and Brent Neale, the New York-based designer whose colorful gemstone work had become a fixture of the editorial styling vocabulary. Ko’s lariats and floating diamond chokers showed up on Beyoncé, Hailey Bieber, and Jennifer Lopez through the year. Neale’s signature happy-clover and mushroom motifs in turquoise, pink opal, and lapis lazuli kept appearing in fashion-magazine flat-lays.
The LA-NY axis had also produced a strong year for Jennifer Meyer (whose hammered-gold earrings and tiny hoops continued to be the styling default for the kind of woman who buys real jewellery and wears it daily), Lizzie Mandler (sharp, geometric, modernist), and Sydney Evan (whose charm-heavy aesthetic had grown into a serious business through the back half of 2022).
Ear stacks and the curated lobe
The “curated ear” had been a concept since Maria Tash opened her Liberty London concession in 2017, but 2022 was the year the practice became fully mainstream. Maria Tash‘s salons stayed booked weeks in advance through the year, and a wider ecosystem grew up around the practice — Studs kept opening new locations as the more accessible answer, Astrid & Miyu brought the London-stack vocabulary to the US.
The aesthetic moved through 2022 from “constellation” stacks (small studs scattered across the lobe) toward heavier, sculptural single-statement pieces — the chunky single huggie, the conch ring, the orbital. The shift mirrored the wider jewellery move toward bolder, more dimensional pieces and away from the dainty-stacking aesthetic that had defined 2018-2020.
The investment piece — what we put on our wrist
2022 was unmistakably a watch year. The mechanical watch market had been on fire since the pandemic, and the cuff and bracelet conversation in fine jewellery was running parallel. Bvlgari‘s Serpenti Tubogas continued to be the entry point for women approaching real watch collecting. Vintage Cartier Tank — particularly the Tank Française — was the year’s most-requested resale piece. And among the independent women’s-focused watch brands, Fope and Roberto Coin kept their Italian-luxury hold on the wrist, while a wave of newer modernist designers carved out the slim-bracelet territory below them.
For non-watch wrist pieces, the year was about the proper gold cuff. Spinelli Kilcollin‘s linked rings translated to a wrist version. Sophie Buhai‘s slim torque cuffs in vermeil were the more accessible version of the look. The entry-level price for a serious gold cuff had crept up into the four figures by year-end, but the case for a single foundational piece — worn daily, not stacked, not seasonal — felt right for the year’s overall mood of intentional, slow purchasing.
2022 closed with an independent-jewellery scene that had moved decisively beyond the dainty-stacking phase and into something more sculptural, more meaningful, and more expensive. The designers we will be watching into 2023: Foundrae, Sophie Bille Brahe, Brent Neale, Anita Ko, Lizzie Mandler, and the next wave of women-founded labels that we expect to find in the next twelve months. We will see you on the first Tuesday of January for the start of 2023 in beauty.