Everyone from Scarlett Johansson, to Nicole Richie, Gwen Stefani, Helena Christensen, Miley Cyrus, and Sting’s daughter, English musician Coco Sumner, have fallen under the spell of Maria Black’s jewelry, yet the Danish designer humbly tells us that, “The biggest compliment I get is when people tell me that they never wore jewelry until seeing my own.”
Last week, we traveled to attend Copenhagen Fashion Week and met with the designer in her namesake store decorated with Art Deco furniture and a treasure trove of geometric, contemporary jewelry made with precious metals. We spoke with Maria Black about everything from the year she produced almost 4,000 pieces herself, to distributing her jewelry at a stall on London’s Portobello Road, to opening the doors to her first boutique in Copenhagen—all in a few short years.
ON HER BEGINNINGS IN IBIZA
I was a late bloomer. I toyed with jewelry as a child, but it was just a hobby. I was traveling in my early twenties, and ended up in Ibiza. But instead of working in a club, I worked for two jewelers. As a girl, I always had lots of jewelry but I never thought of a career in jewelry. In Ibiza, I started doing sketches, and when I came back to Denmark, I began to make pieces on my own, playing with beads and so on. I don’t have any formal design training but I learned to build a piece of jewelry from scratch at a four-year apprenticeship school. I think that finding out how to make a piece of jewelry myself released my mind. When I knew how to make it myself, with my own hands, I discovered that it’s the small details that make the difference. Today, I still personally make every prototype before it goes into production.
ON WORKING WITH PRECIOUS METAL
Silver jewelry was so hopelessly old school and I liked fashion jewelry, but I didn’t want to wear plastic, or copper, or brass. So I set about to create a precious metal collection that had the freedom that you see in the fashion bijoux (trinkets) that you see on the high street. I wanted to take that to precious metal jewelry and make it affordable.
ON BUILDING A “JEWELRY WARDROBE”
I have worked quite a bit with different stacking techniques, experimenting with building different hands and adding components to create different textures. You want to be able to build a jewelry wardrobe like you do with your clothes. You can make it big and chunky, or small and delicate.
I also started playing with top finger rings and different areas of the body; the whole ear, for example, or even chains for your glasses.
ON PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION: THE BEGINNING
After my apprenticeship in Copenhagen, I started doing the markets in London. I made all the jewelry during the week by hand and got a little stall and presented it. It was the best education ever. I learned what price point customers were willing to pay, what pieces they preferred, and I would always fine-tune my work the following week. After seven months, I had a collection. Then, in August 2010 I found two agents in Denmark and off they went with my collection. They came back with a first order and it was absolutely huge. It was quite exciting to see that I had hit a nerve. That first year, I produced almost 4,000 pieces on my own. I did not sleep. I worked seven days a week, and I even built my own website. Of course [laughing as she looks around her surroundings], I eventually scaled up.
Maria Black jewelry is available in Voglia Boutique in Dubai, Boutique Black Pearl in Kuwait City, Harvey Nichols in Riyadh, Joanna Dahdah in Lebanon, at Net-a-Porter, and on her online store. Her namesake store is located in downtown Copenhagen on Silkegade 131113.
See the full collection from Maria Black’s latest line, Occasional Dream, in the gallery above.
As told to Caterina Minthe
