Sarah Ysabel Narici blends ancient symbols and contemporary motifs to create one-of-a-kind pieces that represent the wearer’s story.
Sarah Ysabel Narici’s designs are a little like tattoos — they’re both permanent, dynamic and symbolic to the wearer. Early in her jewelry career, the Italian-British Narici took a conventional route. She attended Central Saint Martins in London with a foundation course in jewelry design, along with fellow classmate Bea Bongiasca, graduating in 2013. After training as a goldsmith, she learned the nuances of the business at international companies. “I was fortunate to have brilliant mentors. Working at Stephen Webster, Marina B, Alexander McQueen and Lorraine Schwartz all helped shape my experience and understanding of the industry,” says Narici.
Lasting message
Yet during her journey, she always had a sense of the jewelry she wanted to create. For her brand Dyne — her mother’s maiden name — which launched in 2022, she invested in finding a balance between the details and motifs of ancient history and clean futuristic shapes, creating customized statement pieces. “I am particularly interested in the tension between history and the future. Growing up in Italy, it was impossible not to be curious and absorb culture from ancient times. My father was working with NASA for a period and profoundly impacted my view of outer space. Therefore, my aesthetic is a combination of the past, present and future, eternal meanings, and beauty in art and precious objects that existed before us and last beyond us,” she shares.
Narici pushes these boundaries to create a client’s entire story in one piece. For her most popular grouping, Loverglyph, she pulls from ancient symbols, contemporary motifs, and different color and shapes of gemstones. “It’s a beautiful way to look at the human experience and tell a client’s story,” she explains. “I am designing jewelry that will endure past trends, that represent a time capsule of a person’s life — as many aspects as they want to reveal in one of my rings [shapes that include horizontal oval, bombe and signets] and pendants.”
Custom collaborations
The collection is almost exclusively made in New York City and the rest is produced internationally. At present, the pieces are one-of-a-kind and customized. For this reason, Narici works with only a handful of retailers who take special commissions and partner with her on exclusive designs for their customers. “I have never been interested in going the traditional retail route and selling to multiple stores, but rather building relationships with a handful of alternative shops and their clients who prefer to collaborate with me on individualized designs,” she says.
But to extend her range, she has recently added a limited-edition collection called Nemes, which gives a nod to the stripes in the headdresses of pharaohs and features curved sinuous shapes that include ear cuffs — hoops with circular charms that also appear on pendants — displaying reproducible or bespoke motifs. “For me it’s about becoming a legacy brand. I also work direct-to-consumer. My goal is to limit the number of pieces and target the retailers that offer more intriguing placements and never sell en masse,” she asserts.
Main image: Sarah Ysabel Narici. (Dyne)
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