Description: XXX
A born-and-bred New Yorker with a decidedly down-to-earth attitude and ebullient charisma, Marla Aaron is the brains behind the fine-jewellery brand bringing fun and functionality to the market. For our
Women Who Win series, she sits down with Clementina Jackson to discuss her journey as an “unlikely entrepreneur”…
Description: XXX
Description: XXX
Take us back to the beginning of your business…
pulls back the curtain on
her colourful world
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WORDS: CLEMENTINA JACKSON
SENIOR ART EDITOR: ANA OSPINA
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR: NICOLA MOYNE
PRODUCER: CLARE LAZARO
“I have always had an obsession with jewellery, and I had this idea that there shouldn't be clasps on chains, but industrial carabiners that you could change out instead. I started playing with the idea probably as far back as 2003, but I had a ‘real’ job and was a single mother at the time. I would spend my lunch hours on 47th Street, in New York’s jewellery district, knocking on doors to find someone who would cast these carabiners I’d bought from the hardware store into precious metals – without charging me a fortune. The jewellers really took me under their wing, and held me up, because I didn’t know what I was doing. Then, one day, I knocked on the right door. This gruff jeweller told me to leave him the carabiners and come back in a week. When I did, he had been to the hardware store himself and had all different kinds of carabiners laid out on his desk. I knew then that something was going to come of it.
“It got much harder from there, but I learned more and my curiosity kept growing. I was working out of my tiny apartment – I can’t even express how chaotic it was – and it took me four years to hire my first employee. When I hired my second, I literally had to cut a piece off my marble table to make room for them in my house.
“Thankfully, the jeweller I was working with took matters into his own hands and signed a lease for a space for me on 47th Street, right next to his. Soon afterwards I needed another space, then another… Looking back,
I was terrified. I’m such an unlikely entrepreneur – I really didn’t want to grow, but that was a mistake;
I shouldn’t have been so scared.”
“I’m such an unlikely entrepreneur – I really didn’t want to grow, but that was a mistake”
£1,980
Stoned Baby Heartlock Carabiner Clasp
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£350
Sunglasses
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Aaron
£2,230
The Everything resin
jewellery box
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£4,310
Baguette Babylock & Squarelink Chain necklace
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£10,280
Star & Moon lock
Chain necklace
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£300
Silver Babylock Heavy
Curb Chain Bracelet
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£13,277
Allstone Chubby DiMe
Ring with Mixed Sapphires
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“One is the ‘Blaize’ coat, which I think is so chic and timeless and just adds the perfect finish to any look. I also love our ‘Parachute’ dress, which has been brought back as part of our summer ’25 collection. It’s such a unique and iconic piece for the brand, and truly highlights the immense talent of our design team.”
Any go-tos from the archives?
£859
‘Zep’ Sleeveless
Shearling Gilet
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£859
‘Zep’ Sleeveless
Shearling Gilet
SHOP NOW
£859
‘Zep’ Sleeveless
Shearling Gilet
SHOP NOW
£859
‘Zep’ Sleeveless
Shearling Gilet
SHOP NOW
Marla
Unfiltered and mildly chaotic, they’re almost as joy-sparking as her hand-crafted designs themselves, that range from signature carabiner lock charms and chunky utilitarian chains, to trundle and interlocking rings—all made to be mixed together, played with, and, above all, enjoyed.
It’s little wonder, then, that since launching in 2012, Marla Aaron’s eponymous label has gone from strength to strength, becoming a global phenomenon that has injected the luxury jewellery industry with playful energy aplenty. And now, with the opening of its first UK store in Liberty London, no doubt the brand is set to reach even higher heights.
Here, the jeweller shares her secrets for success, unexpected design inspirations, and the one piece of advice that completely changed her perspective.
M
arla Aaron counts the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Blake Lively and Julianne Moore among her celebrity fans, but it’s her Instagram videos that have won her a loyal and sizeable social following over the years.
“It’s funny – I was just in the living room at my parents’ house and saw that my mother has old bits of hardware on display. Maybe my love of hardware came from her, but I’ve always been interested in old pieces of metal junk, and love visiting hardware stores. I visit them in every country I go to, and go on wild goose chases to find the best ones; tour guides think I’m crazy. The English are the last bastion of wonderful hardware stores… If you look at our Everything Box, there are all these hooks for hanging chains on one side, and they’re literally taken from pieces I bought at a hardware store in downtown London. I’m amazed to say that the same carabiner designs that were in the first iterations of the collection are still best-sellers. That’s so fascinating to me and our product-development team.”
How did you land on the idea for your signature designs?
“For years, I was essentially moonlighting as a jeweller and doing it as a job on the side, while also running communications for the digital division of a marketing company. I feel bad saying it, because I loved my colleagues, but I hated my job. I didn’t enjoy any part of it and I realise this now that I know what loving my work actually feels like. The last straw came when I had to go to France for the Cannes Lions event to run a big project with a celebrity. I was completely dreading it, annoyed that I wasn’t going to be able to see my kids off to camp or work on my jewellery, so I started out in a bad mood. The rest of the team was staying in a hotel, but I decided to book myself an apartment. I arrived at 6am and went to make myself a pot of coffee, and it exploded on my arm, giving me second- and third-degree burns. So now I’m in pain and in a rage. It was just a perfect storm.
“I told my colleague over a glass of rosé that evening: ‘I need to leave, I can’t do this anymore. I’m having my mental breakdown right here in front of you. I’m quitting, I’m going home and I’m starting a jewellery company’. And that’s what I did. I wrote a PowerPoint presentation to my husband on the plane ride home and he said OK, as long as I did it from home and didn’t spend tonnes of money. I don’t really think he could have said no to me in that moment: I had the bandage, I was sobbing, I was a total mess.”
What made you take the plunge to pursue your business full-time?
“One of the riskiest things I’ve ever done is going over to Spain at 23 with no plan. There was no internet, so I went to the library to research what companies I could work for there and how to write a proper European résumé. I ended up landing at ELLE, which was my first job in publishing, and I had a long career in magazines after that. I worked on the Spanish launch of Cosmopolitan, too, which was amazing. I was on the business side, working as a fashion manager, looking after brands ranging from Zara and Carrera y Carrera to Cartier.”
Tell us about the biggest risk you’ve taken…
“I love the interlocking DiMe rings so much because they open and you can put a message inside. I’m very proud that we received a US patent for them and I love how many ways we’ve morphed them. I’m wearing them three ways right now: one is the first DiMe Siempre that we made with De Beers; then I have a diamond one that I gifted to myself; and one is hand-engraved with a message I wrote in my high-school yearbook – a quote by Edna St. Vincent Millay that says: ‘My candle burns at both ends. Where do I set it down, my friends?’ And it’s still true.”
Any favourite pieces in the collection?
“Watching my employees grow with us, become authoritative, take the bull by the horns, then go out on their own gives me an enormous sense of pride”
“I’ve had a lot of really proud moments. Sometimes they’re really silly, like when the vending machine I designed ended up at the Brooklyn Museum. I never anticipated that could happen. Then, winning the GEM Award for Jewellery Design in 2024 – that was just the shocker of shocks for me. I didn’t think we had the attention of the industry in that way, so that was very exciting. But then there are these other moments that make me feel infinitely prouder. For example, I have an employee who has grown up in the company who is leaving the business now, which I’m very sad about, but watching this young woman grow from working in customer experience very early in her career, to being our head of marketing, has been a total joy. Watching my employees grow with us, become authoritative, take the bull by the horns, then go out on their own gives me an enormous sense of pride. I’m always shocked at the accomplishments of the people who work with me, and amazed that they choose to hang their hat at our company.”
What has been your proudest moment so far?
“We have a big bell in the office, like the ones they had in boxing rings in the 1940s, and if there’s a big sale or a big success someone rings it. It’s very loud.”
How do you celebrate the wins?
“This is very hard to pin down but, for me, it’s the idea of doing the right thing. It’s trying to do the right thing for the people, the product and the company, and that’s very hard to do all the time. I don’t always get it right but I always try.”
What’s one thing you won’t compromise on in your business?
“I’d just given up my career, my brand wasn’t a real business yet, I was working out of my house… to the outside world, it all looked crazy and I started to think it was too”
“I’ve made so many mistakes and I really think that they have made me stronger. They fuelled me in every way and I hope that everyone gets to make a lot of mistakes. It’s really irrelevant how many mistakes you make in this life – it’s about how you recover from them. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s absolutely true. Mistakes are going to happen all the time, every day. I want my company to be a safe space for people to make mistakes;
I want our product-development process to be a safe space for mistakes. I actually wear a lot of the ‘bad’ products on purpose too, like, right now, I’m wearing one of our Zephyr bracelets that was actually a mistake but I still love it.”
Have you made any big mistakes along the way?
“I have an uncle who is an entrepreneur. A few years ago, I had this idea to build a vending machine, the most luxurious vending machine imaginable. I thought the hardest part was going to be building it, but I found this company in Ohio who did it for me, and they had it ready to go. [The problem was] I couldn’t find a home for it, so I was thinking I’d just have to put it in my bedroom. It was huge. The whole thing kind of floored me and I think everyone thought I was insane. I’d just given up my career, my brand wasn’t a real business yet, I was working out of my house… to the outside world, it all looked crazy and I started to think it was too. One day my uncle called me and asked about the project, and I told him that I couldn’t find a place for it so it was just one big fail. I was going to cancel the delivery, pay the company, and move on. But he said: ‘Wait, you’re going to stop the project because you can’t find a place for it? That’s not a reason to stop. You have a good idea, you need to keep going to the end. If it’s delivered into your bedroom, it’s delivered into your bedroom.’ After I hung up I had a totally different perspective, and I still think about that often, because that advice really shifted everything in my mind.”
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
“Our brand allows people to be resourceful with their jewellery; to give their own jewellery a new lease of life. I think that’s very powerful”
“Our brand allows people to be resourceful with their jewellery; to give their own jewellery a new lease of life. I think that’s very powerful. They’re picking up the detritus of their life at the bottom of their jewellery box, and we’re showing them how to mix their own chains and charms with our pieces. I think this idea of utility and function in jewellery is very beautiful – and we’re playful with it; we’re never too serious about it. We have a distinctly non-snobby approach; we have something for everyone; and we make every piece with the same precision. Even the silver heart locks that we give away to single mothers each year as part of our #lockyourmom initiative are made in the same workshops as our gold pieces.”
Tell us the secret to your success…
“London has a lot of memories for me – I visited when I was 19 for the first time. I’m obsessed with Egg, a tiny clothing store on Kinnerton Street in Belgravia, that sells amazing voluminous dresses. It was started by Maureen Doherty in the Nineties, who helped build Issey Miyake’s brand, and I try to go every time I’m in town. I also love having an early supper on a Sunday at Claridge’s in the main dining room. It has the most amazing suede walls, and I love to order pot pies and roast chicken there. I always go to one of the Ottolenghi restaurants and Rules, for its grouse, too. I just love British food! Then, obviously, there’s Liberty London, where we have just launched our brand in the Jewellery Hall. I love that the floors creak, all the haberdashery, the fabrics… it’s so special.”
Any favourite places to visit in London?
Photographer: MONICA KRYSTEL ROSE
Marla
Mary Katrantzou may be Bvlgari’s first-ever Creative Director of Leather Goods and Accessories, but her relationship with the iconic Italian label began in 2019, when they collaborated on a very special fashion show with her namesake label. Here, as part of our Women Who Win series, the designer tells
Penny Goldstone why finding the confidence to silence self-doubt has shaped her success
and energy is a shining example of someone who has done just that, and is flying the flag for a new era of empowered women in her country.
Kenewendo is a star. Watch her deliver a speech to a room full of men – she has been given a post overseeing what is still a typically male-dominated industry in Africa and beyond – and you will see that potential come out in full. Her confident cadence is captivating, and off stage she exudes a strong sense of style that makes her a perfect fit for one of the more glamorous of her beats: the diamond industry.
Diamonds are big business in Botswana. The land is home to some of the most productive mines in the world, and accounts for 80% of the country’s exports and about a quarter of its GDP. Since the discovery of diamonds in Botswana in 1967, the per capita income has risen from $80 to $7,238 in 2021.
The arrival of diamonds has been transformative for Botswana, but it is not a country without its struggles. “We do see quite a gap, from a financial perspective, between the rich and the poor in this country,” says Mmakeng Leepile, who works for UN Women in Botswana. She speaks of high unemployment rates (unemployment hit 27.6% in 2024, according to the
World Bank Group), which disproportionately impact women. And when women are employed, they generally earn less than men. There is also a high number of single-headed households, which tend to be led by women who, as a result, need flexible work arrangements.
rue empowerment, says Bogolo Kenewendo,
can only come “when women have the freedom, support, and opportunity to reach their fullest potential”. The Botswana minister of minerals
“I have always had an obsession with jewellery, and I had this idea that there shouldn't be clasps on chains, but industrial carabiners that you could change out instead. I started playing with the idea probably as far back as 2003, but I had a ‘real’ job and was a single mother at the time. I would spend my lunch hours on 47th Street, in New York’s jewellery district, knocking on doors to find someone who would cast these carabiners I’d bought from the hardware store into precious metals – without charging me a fortune. The jewellers really took me under their wing, and held me up, because I didn’t know what I was doing. Then, one day, I knocked on the right door. This gruff jeweller told me to leave him the carabiners and come back in a week. When I did, he had been to the hardware store himself and had all diferent kinds of carabiners laid out on his desk. I knew then that something was going to come of it.
“It got much harder from there, but I learned more and my curiosity kept growing. I was working out of my tiny apartment – I can’t even express how chaotic it was – and it took me four years to hire my first employee. When I hired my second, I literally had to cut a piece off my marble table to make room for them in my house.
“Thankfully, the jeweller I was working with took matters into his own hands and signed a lease for a space for me on 47th Street, right next to his. Soon afterwards I needed another space, then another… Looking back, I was terrified. I’m such an unlikely entrepreneur – I really didn’t want to grow, but that was a mistake; I shouldn’t have been so scared.”
Take us back to the beginning of your business…
“I wanted to make the move from merchandise to buying. I was told it would never happen, but I went for the role [anyway], despite knowing
I might lose my job and also upset a lot of people in the process”
“It’s funny – I was just in the living room at my parents’ house and saw that my mother has old bits of hardware on display. Maybe my love of hardware came from her, but I’ve always been interested in old pieces of metal junk, and love visiting hardware stores. I visit them in every country I go to, and go on wild goose chases to find the best ones; tour guides think I’m crazy. The English are the last bastion of wonderful hardware stores… If you look at our Everything Box, there are all these hooks for hanging chains on one side, and they’re literally taken from pieces I bought at a hardware store in downtown London. I’m amazed to say that the same carabiner designs that were in the first iterations of the collection are still best-sellers. That’s so fascinating to me and our product-development team.”
How did you land on the idea for your signature designs?
“For years, I was essentially moonlighting as a jeweller and doing it as a job on the side, while also running communications for the digital division of a marketing company. I feel bad saying it, because I loved my colleagues, but I hated my job. I didn’t enjoy any part of it and I realise this now that I know what loving my work actually feels like. The last straw came when I had to go to France for the Cannes Lions event to run a big project with a celebrity. I was completely dreading it, annoyed that I wasn’t going to be able to see my kids off to camp or work on my jewellery, so I started out in a bad mood. The rest of the team was staying in a hotel, but I decided to book myself an apartment. I arrived at 6am and went to make myself a pot of coffee, and it exploded on my arm, giving me second- and third-degree burns. So now I’m in pain and in a rage. It was just a perfect storm.
“I told my colleague over a glass of rosé that evening: ‘I need to leave, I can’t do this anymore. I’m having my mental breakdown right here in front of you. I’m quitting, I’m going home and I’m starting a jewellery company. And that’s what I did. I wrote a PowerPoint presentation to my husband on the plane ride home and he said OK, as long as I did it from home and didn’t spend tonnes of money. I don’t really think he could have said no to me in that moment: I had the bandage, I was sobbing, I was a total mess.”
What made you take the plunge to pursue your business full-time?
“One of the riskiest things I’ve ever done is going over to Spain at 23 with no plan. There was no internet, so I went to the library to research what companies I could work for there and how to write a proper European résumé. I ended up landing at ELLE, which was my first job in publishing, and I had a long career in magazines after that. I worked on the Spanish launch of Cosmopolitan, too, which was amazing. I was on the business side, working as a fashion manager, looking after brands ranging from Zara and Carrera y Carrera to Cartier.”
Tell us about the biggest risk you’ve taken…
“I’m such an unlikely entrepreneur – I really didn’t want to grow,
but that was a mistake”
“For years, I was essentially moonlighting as a jeweller and doing it as a job on the side, while also running communications for the digital division of a marketing company. I feel bad saying it, because I loved my colleagues, but I hated my job. I didn’t enjoy any part of it and I realise this now that I know what loving my work actually feels like. The last straw came when I had to go to France for the Cannes Lions event to run a big project with a celebrity. I was completely dreading it, annoyed that I wasn’t going to be able to see my kids off to camp or work on my jewellery, so I started out in a bad mood. The rest of the team was staying in a hotel, but I decided to book myself an apartment. I arrived at 6am and went to make myself a pot of coffee, and it exploded on my arm, giving me second- and third-degree burns. So now I’m in pain and in a rage. It was just a perfect storm.
“I told my colleague over a glass of rosé that evening: ‘I need to leave, I can’t do this anymore. I’m having my mental breakdown right here in front of you. I’m quitting, I’m going home and I’m starting a jewellery company. And that’s what I did. I wrote a PowerPoint presentation to my husband on the plane ride home and he said OK, as long as I did it from home and didn’t spend tonnes of money. I don’t really think he could have said no to me in that moment: I had the bandage, I was sobbing, I was a total mess.”
What made you take the plunge to pursue your business full-time?
“I’ve had a lot of really proud moments. Sometimes they’re really silly, like when the vending machine I designed ended up at the Brooklyn Museum. I never anticipated that could happen. Then, winning the GEM Award for Jewellery Design in 2024 – that was just the shocker of shocks for me. I didn’t think we had the attention of the industry in that way, so that was very exciting. But then there are these other moments that make me feel infinitely prouder. For example, I have an employee who has grown up in the company who is leaving the business now, which I’m very sad about, but watching this young woman grow from working in customer experience very early in her career, to being our head of marketing, has been a total joy. Watching my employees grow with us, become authoritative, take the bull by the horns, then go out on their own gives me an enormous sense of pride. I’m always shocked at the accomplishments of the people who work with me, and amazed that they choose to hang their hat at our company.”
What has been your proudest moment so far?
“We have a big bell in the offce, like the ones they had in boxing rings in the 1940s, and if there’s a big sale or a big success someone rings it. It’s very loud.”
How do you celebrate the wins?
“Watching my employees grow with us, become authoritative, take the bull by the horns, then go out on their own gives me an enormous sense of pride”
“I’ve had a lot of really proud moments. Sometimes they’re really silly, like when the vending machine I designed ended up at the Brooklyn Museum. I never anticipated that could happen. Then, winning the GEM Award for Jewellery Design in 2024 – that was just the shocker of shocks for me. I didn’t think we had the attention of the industry in that way, so that was very exciting. But then there are these other moments that make me feel infinitely prouder. For example, I have an employee who has grown up in the company who is leaving the business now, which I’m very sad about, but watching this young woman grow from working in customer experience very early in her career, to being our head of marketing, has been a total joy. Watching my employees grow with us, become authoritative, take the bull by the horns, then go out on their own gives me an enormous sense of pride. I’m always shocked at the accomplishments of the people who work with me, and amazed that they choose to hang their hat at our company.”
What has been your proudest moment so far?
“I’ve made so many mistakes and I really think that they have made me stronger. They fuelled me in every way and I hope that everyone gets to make a lot of mistakes. It’s really irrelevant how many mistakes you make in this life – it’s about how you recover from them. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s absolutely true. Mistakes are going to happen all the time, every day. I want my company to be a safe space for people to make mistakes; I want our product-development process to be a safe space for mistakes. I actually wear a lot of the ‘bad’ products on purpose too, like, right now, I’m wearing one of our Zephyr bracelets that was actually a mistake but I still love it.”
Have you made any big mistakes along the way?
“I’d just given up my career, my brand wasn’t a real business yet, I was working out of my house… to the outside world, it all looked crazy and
I started to think it was too”
“I’ve made so many mistakes and I really think that they have made me stronger. They fuelled me in every way and I hope that everyone gets to make a lot of mistakes. It’s really irrelevant how many mistakes you make in this life – it’s about how you recover from them. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s absolutely true. Mistakes are going to happen all the time, every day. I want my company to be a safe space for people to make mistakes; I want our product-development process to be a safe space for mistakes. I actually wear a lot of the ‘bad’ products on purpose too, like, right now, I’m wearing one of our Zephyr bracelets that was actually a mistake but I still love it.”
Have you made any big mistakes along the way?
“Our brand allows people to be resourceful with their jewellery; to give their own jewellery a new lease of life. I think that’s very powerful. They’re picking up the detritus of their life at the bottom of their jewellery box, and we’re showing them how to mix their own chains and charms with our pieces. I think this idea of utility and function in jewellery is very beautiful – and we’re playful with it; we’re never too serious about it. We have a distinctly non-snobby approach; we have something for everyone; and we make every piece with the same precision. Even the silver heart locks that we give away to single mothers each year as part of our #lockyourmom initiative are made in the same workshops as our gold pieces.”
Tell us the secret to your success…
£13,277
Allstone Chubby DiMe Ring with Mixed Sapphires
SHOP NOW