In this FRONTPAGE story, we explore how jewelry designer Martine Ali is pushing fashion forward.
“It’s hard and edgy, but also beautiful and bright.” The four adjectives used by Martine Ali to describe silver could easily be used to describe her, too. As one of New York’s biggest jewelry designers, the alloy has fused with her identity. “Gold feels far too precious, and oftentimes it’s done very delicately,” she says. “Silver just has this universal ability to appeal to different people in different ways.”
It’s this versatility that Ali has tapped into since launching her namesake brand in 2010. Though her designs fit into the familiar categories of bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings, Martine Ali pieces are meant to be modular — creative building blocks ready to be recontextualized by the wearer. The brand’s adaptability has garnered a devoted clientele and a stable of stockists across South Korea, Japan, Europe, and the US.
Ali’s work is imbued with a sense of experimentation. It's also attracted a steady crop of creative players and celebrities — including the Compton-born superstar Kendrick Lamar.
“He wore my jewelry for his entire DAMN tour. We did a little jewelry wardrobe for him and that album was received so well,” she recalls. “It was a big moment in his career so that traction bled over — and the pieces he was wearing were quite bold.” Among the standouts was a delicate, subversive silver choker chain he donned for the 2018 Grammy Awards. With her brand and public image intertwined, Ali has cemented her place as an NYC baddie and girlboss extraordinaire, amassing a client list that has included everyone from Rihanna and Bad Bunny to SZA and Lady Gaga.
Though Ali has staked a claim as a source to the stars for top-tier designs, there’s no writing her off as just another out-of-reach, Jacob the Jeweler type. Alongside pricier pieces like the Clover Crossbody Bag crafted from sterling silver coated brass chains ($2,450), the brand also features a range of accessible picks at less than $150. It’s all part of a mission to create jewelry for everyone no matter their budget — an ethos that extends far back to her roots in Chicago.
Her love for jewelry feels like it is inscribed in her DNA, and, in some ways, it is. As she recalls the pivotal moments from her childhood that led her to jewelry design, it’s the antique shops and jewelry counters she visited with her mom that stand out. “My mom was one of those moms that had a shopping addiction problem,” she says with a laugh. “She would hide the bags in the trunk and be like, ‘Don’t tell your dad.’ The vintage silver game and the beautiful pieces that were available were unmatched. Seeing that, with her, in that phase of my life, opened my eyes to just how much was possible with that medium.”
It was the secret shopping trips but also visiting the local craft store with her babysitter. When Ali wasn’t watching TRL and BET, she was busy making necklaces, surrounded by a small mountain of beads. Soon, she was making pieces for her mom to wear to work, and then she was selling them to her mom’s coworkers. “I started bringing my jewelry to her office and doing trunk shows [for her coworkers] in the conference room. Then it moved into doing trunk shows at the house. Grown women would fight over my necklaces.” Her pieces ranged from $35 to over $150 – for the necklaces with pricey African beads. “Everyone that came [could] walk away with something.”
A few years (and one big move to New York City) later, Ali landed a job with DKNY. Just like her mom’s coworkers, Ali caught the attention of her colleagues by wearing her pieces to work, and then she caught the attention of DKNY’s fashion editor, Jane Chung, who tasked Ali with producing the jewelry for the brand’s runway shows. The early works for the runway were, admittedly, held together by a lot of glue, but the process pushed Ali to take a metalworking class and learn the basics — including the realization that traditional metalworking wasn’t for her. “Now I have a better understanding of how to direct the people that are doing the metalwork, but it's not something that I do myself. I'm more conceptual and my process is very much about identifying shapes and silhouettes.”
After the runway shows, the foundation for Ali’s own brand had been laid. She rented out a shared studio space, in 2016, and suddenly her entire life hinged on making her own work. “It was this beautiful ‘all in it for the craft’ time where I was just passing out in my work. Waking up in my work. I was completely immersing myself in this lifestyle… The practice of immersing yourself in your work is insanely fruitful.”
In true New York fashion, it was a friend who worked as a bike messenger and weed deliverer who inspired her to introduce modularity into her work. “He was like, ‘Oh, I need this wallet chain to connect to this key to do this to do that.’ And when you're living in your work like that, that's when you start to think, ‘This could be this, this could be that.’"
It’s been years since those early days spent toiling in the studio. Today, the Martine Ali brand has grown to a four-person team that Ali refers to lovingly as her “found family.” “With every person that I bring onto the team, I teach them everything and then see where their strengths are and pivot them into that space. It's cool to tap into the creativity that comes from people that don't have a traditional jewelry background.” Still, with the brand’s presence and list of stockists growing, she admits she’s ready for “a chapter that feels like someone else is working hand in hand with me to run the business.” (That, or at least a “business daddy” to navigate the “patriarchal chains” of her industry.)
For now, she’ll just keep posting wins. Just last year, Ali’s work was recognized in Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History, a massive tome by journalist Vikki Tobak covering four decades of iconic imagery throughout hip-hop and rap. “I'm not a traditional jeweler so to even be included in that conversation for me is the biggest deal. That's a bucket-list thing.”
Signs of what’s to come for her brand have already begun to appear. At the sprawling HBX flagship in New York’s Chinatown, Martine Ali pieces are displayed on sculptural, custom-built steel fixtures through which “the jewelry [is] to be experienced.” And then there’s the collaboration with ready-to-wear designer Jane Wade for New York Fashion Week this past fall. In a return to her DKNY days, Ali crafted custom pieces for the runway that included a standout Bluetooth headset cast in solid sterling. Like a found relic dug up from the graveyard of early 2000s tech, it marks a playful new direction for the designer.
As the brand continues to pivot and experiment, its core ethos remains constant. “It’s not about a customer. It’s about a state of mind, a type of individual,” Ali explains. “The people that I want wearing my jewelry are the people that are breaking barriers stylistically. That is why, full circle, it’s important for the brand to have these real touch points that are accessible for everybody — with no money or [with] a lot of money. Those are the people that I think need to be wearing the pieces or included in the conversation. Those are the people that are stepping outside of the norm and moving the needle.”
