In Jewelry, Sometimes Design Speaks as Loudly as a Logo

Whether up close or from across a room, there’s no mistaking a Cartier Love bracelet or a Rolex dial, at least in Robert Keith’s estimation.

“When I didn’t know anything about designing jewelry, I understood the power of those pieces,” and how they shaped and defined their respective brands, he said. They have no large, loud and repetitive logos or trademark colors, merely a clear design directive.

Deeply influenced by what he called “these iconic recognizable attributes,” Mr. Keith, the founder and creative chief of Hoorsenbuhs, a fine jewelry house and lifestyle brand based in Venice, Calif., has been singular in his aesthetic. (It is pronounced HORSE-en-boo, and was the name of a 16th-century Dutch merchant ship in a half-remembered story that his grandmother told, which he said he has never verified.)

His tri-link design, inspired by ships’ anchor chains but with hints of the 1970s, has been presented as bracelets, rings, cuffs, earrings, necklaces and pendants. For the past 18 years, the form has been “our social cue and clue,” he said, a statement without an announcement.

“There’s certain jewelry that, if you know, you can recognize it in a second,” said Alissa Matkovich, chief executive of Stacked by Reservoir, a private jewelry sales and concierge service in Los Angeles. “To the untrained eye it just looks like a gold bracelet or a tennis necklace. It doesn’t have a bold signature, but it’s of course signed. It’s a piece that can be quietly but boldly worn and likely always coveted.”

Like Hoorsenbuhs, established brands such as Spinelli Kilcollin and Suzanne Kalan attract fresh and repeat customers with what they are not. Or, as Sarah Hendler, a fine jewelry designer in Los Angeles, said, they aren’t “Loud. Gaudy. Logo heavy.”

Their jewelry, in effect, is their logos. “It’s jewelry that stands the test of time,” Ms. Hendler said. “How the designer is able to reinterpret one theme or jazz it up adds an edginess that feels fresh.”

Even though the tri-link design remains the prevailing motif at Hoorsenbuhs, Mr. Keith plays with it. Sometimes the center link is stretched around the wrist, like in the Revere Cuff With Diamonds ($22,500); other times it is simplified to a single elongated link, as with the Dame Phantom ring ($3,950). The customer often has the option of adding diamonds, including baguettes and pavé detailing.

“Everything is hand set, and each piece comes from the same tri-link,” said Kether Parker, Hoorsenbuhs’s brand director, “but it’s never-ending inspo.”

What the tri-link is to Hoorsenbuhs, circles are to Spinelli Kilcollin. Founded by the business and life partners Yves Spinelli and Dwyer Kilcollin in 2010, the brand is “interconnected, mobile and modular, and everything we do, we’re designing around a circle,” Mx. Kilcollin said. Spinelli Kilcollin’s first line was Galaxy, stackable rings connected with smaller circles.

Galaxy rings run from $200 to $50,000, in part because the customer has a choice among silver; yellow, black, white or rose gold; and platinum. “This brand laid the groundwork for clients mixing metals,” said Alexandra Lippin, senior vice president of fine jewelry at the retail chain Elyse Walker. “Then they went and started mixing different colors of diamonds and gemstones. My clients love the novelty of it.”

Ms. Lippin, who buys from about 30 jewelry brands for the business’s eight stores, said it began stocking Spinelli Kilcollin in July 2016 and now sells one of its rings every other week. “Clients want a point of view,” she said. “In a time when everyone can be a jewelry designer, Spinelli Kilcollin and Hoorsenbuhs still excite me because they’ve both stayed true to their brand ethos, and it continues to clearly resonate.”

Elyse Walker began selling Hoorsenbuhs in 2019 and opened a shop-in-shop for the brand at its Newport Beach, Calif., store in July 2021. “Sales have been consistently strong year over year for both brands and they are among our top five best sellers in jewelry,” Ms. Lippin said.

While Hoorsenbuhs and Spinelli Kilcollin focused on shapes, Suzanne Kalan zeroed in on one gem-cutting style: baguette.

The brand’s designer Suzanne Kalandjian, nicknamed the queen of baguettes by her industry peers, created her Classic Fireworks Diamond bangle (from $8,600) more than a decade ago.

To create the piece, she arranged clusters of baguette diamonds, some upright, some tilted, some “just so.” And even now, she views every piece as an iteration and continuation of that first bangle.

Ms. Hendler, the Los Angeles jeweler, said a knowledgeable jewelry fan can always recognize the design: “The way a design sits or falls on someone, there’s a weightiness that you can see, and that’s how you just know it’s the original.”

And now, observers say, those fans are choosing such classic styles in increasing numbers. “For a while there was this over-layered look where I saw people piling on necklaces and earrings,” said Ms. Lippin of Elyse Walker, “but it’s back to the tennis bracelet and a pair of studs; classics.”

In that vein, David Farrugia, founder of Uniform Object, a jewelry brand that debuted at New York Fashion Week in fall 2021, often finds himself ruminating on the word subtle. “Subtle but impactful, familiar but unique” — that is the definition of the new classic, he said.

Mr. Farrugia uses a spur — a narrow U shape — to distinguish his goods, the most popular of which include a pair of diamond-accented Spur Studs ($4,000) and an 18-karat gold Heavy Metal Tennis Necklace with a total of 10.5 carats of white diamonds and a four-inch chain with a diamond-encrusted spur at the end ($49,950).

To him, a spur is a broken link that represents “breaking away from the typical aesthetic of what fine jewelry is.”

“It’s a little rebellious with the sharp edges, breaking the norm,” he added.

“He doesn’t skimp on weight,” said Ms. Lippin, who began buying Uniform Object in March and has seen it become one of the chain’s most popular brands.

It simply goes to show, she said, that “people will invest when they believe in a design and when they can identify a piece that doesn’t look like everything else.”