This jewellery label pairs playfulness with personality

Marla Aaron, maker of one of the coolest jewellery labels, sets up shop in Dubai

In recent years, there’s been a slew of designers demystifying the preciousness and/or stuffiness traditionally associated with fine jewellery. There’s not only a playfulness to the motifs of the pieces and the techniques used to craft them but also, equally, an invitation for the wearer to play around and experiment with the jewellery. And Marla Aaron takes this invitation very seriously. 

It begins with the display, which is an unconventional glass case designed to look but not touch. It’s more a bar cart, inspired by Aaron’s own sewing box, its manifold drawers and sliders opening to reveal trays upon trays of jewellery, making good on that invitation to come play. It reinforces her obsession with mechanisms, cleverly mirroring the modularity of its offering. Aaron’s namesake label was founded in New York in 2012, when she quit a 25-year-long career in marketing and advertising to take her fascination with jewellery to the next level. Soon, thanks to Aaron’s no-holds-barred approach to Instagram, her label became Insta-famous, capturing hearts and imaginations across the world. 

The jewellery itself is a whole universe of carabiner-inspired locks and chains and, more recently, objects. It started with the oval-shaped Original Lock, which has continued to evolve in form, choice of metal, and gem-studded variations. The real fun lies in combining these pieces to devise your own permutations. And with the launch of Aaron’s store-in-store at THAT Concept Store in Dubai, the possibility of seriously satisfactory play is even closer for her Indian audience. “I’m thrilled to be in Dubai because we’ve had buyers from here, from India, from the beginning, thanks to Instagram. There is a culture of jewellery in India and Arab countries that is so distinct from the United States. Indian and Arab women adore jewellery, they reconfigure their jewellery a lot, and our jewellery was made for that. It was made to be played with!”

A self-confessed obsession

Though not classically trained in designing jewellery, Aaron has had “a lifelong obsession with jewellery.” And that is probably what enables her to come at it from an entirely unpretentious, deeply curious point of view. Maybe it’s something only an outsider could attempt, making jewellery with the unlikeliest of muses ranging from climbing clips and ziplines to toilet-roll holders and NYC rocks and old automobile paint. “I was making the locks in the early 2000s, just making them for myself, for friends. I was giving them away, and the deeper I got into it, I realised that I could morph the shape, and combine it with chains–the possibilities were literally endless. It is such a visceral experience to be able to take the little bits and pieces and combine them in interesting ways. And I'm not saying that because I made it up. I'm saying it because I've seen it, I've experienced it around the world with our jewellery.”

This self-confessed obsession has led to the oval carabiner being reimagined in all kinds of shapes and expressions. There are locks in the shape of stars, crescents, Bowie-inspired lightning bolts, infinity symbols and triangles. “I get caught up in a mechanism. I get caught up in solving a particular problem or an idea that I'm working on, and then where can we go with it.”

Equating jewellery to joy

Amongst Aaron’s other bewilderingly joyous jewellery experiments is a gumball machine dispensing Babylocks complete with a token stamped ‘Jewelry’s only job is to bring joy’; and a jewellery vending machine, inspired by a trip to Japan, bestowing jewellery instantly with the swipe of a card. Seemingly unhinged, but Aaron believes it’s that unexpectedness which holds the key to the joy. In a video explaining the vending machine, she says, “precious things should be easily accessible…in unusual places.”"

This accessibility too is a larger point of contemplation. “I think a lot about jewellery,” she explains, “and I really do think a lot about this idea of what is precious and what isn’t, this delineation of and snobbery of high-end jewellery. Women today, from all walks of life, mix their jewellery–they're wearing fun, they're wearing high, those that can. That’s my philosophy and the reason why we make silver Babylocks and also a pink diamond lock worth $300,000. We make both of those things with equal zeal, equal passion, and in the same exquisite way. Because fine jewellery is for everybody, and jewellery should bring people joy. I believe in those things deeply.”

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