Gemma’s fourth-floor walk-up, in a charmingly dilapidated brownstone on West Twenty-Fourth Street, was more of a work studio than apartment. The six-hundred-square-foot space was just a few blocks from school and for Gemma functioned as design studio and sales floor.
As soon as the graduation ceremony ended, she couldn’t resist announcing a flash sale on her social media. It was her own way of celebrating. Gemma checked the time; customers would be arriving any minute.
Whenever Gemma accumulated a few dozen pieces, she held a sale. All it took was the right photo and just a few seconds to get the word out on Instagram, where she had close to a hundred thousand followers. Today, she piled three chunky rings on her right forefinger and snapped a shot and posted with the caption: How sweet is this? New Rock Candy rings available now . . .
Her Rock Candy rings sold out as fast as she could make them, gold-plated, sterling silver, and fourteen-karat-gold rings set with large semiprecious gemstones: bright citrines, sumptuous lavender amethysts, rich amber quartz. She also offered a costume-jewelry version in gold-plated brass with cushion-cut, colored glass “stones.”
To Gemma, costume jewelry was just as precious as real jewelry. Sure, if you took an expensive diamond and set it in expensive platinum it would be appealing. But it took imagination and craft to transform non-precious metal and rhinestones, beads, or glass into something equally compelling. When she looked back at work by Elsa Schiaparelli from the 1950s, playing with color and shape to make crystal bracelets as extraordinary as anything diamond, she understood the true power of creation.
Gemma pushed her furniture and tools to one side of the room. Aside from the foldaway daybed, her apartment was dominated by jewelry-making equipment she’d bought with the dwindling remains of a small inheritance from her paternal grandmother, her nana—the woman who raised her after her parents’ deaths when she was eight years old. Nana had only seen the apartment once. That was enough.
“How, Gemma Louise, can you live this way?”
Anne Maybrook was a simple woman from Pennsylvania farm country who didn’t understand why Gemma couldn’t be happy attending a more local school like Penn State. Or, if Gemma really wanted to be fancy about it and got a scholarship, she could apply to her late father’s alma mater, Cornell. “But,” Nana warned, “it was that kind of uppity crowd that got him into trouble in the first place. Filled his head with ideas about moving to the city—ideas that didn’t turn out so great in the end, did they?”
Gemma told her that New York School of Design was the best place for the career—the future—that she wanted.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nana said.
Gemma had been so certain that she’d have the chance to show her grandmother that she had nothing to worry about, that she’d become a successful jewelry designer and make her proud. But Nana passed away in her sleep a few years ago, not living to see her graduate NYSD, never mind become a success.
In her studio, Gemma had a workbench, torches, metal shears, pickle pots, jewelry wire, and every imaginable sort of hammer and pliers. It also served as a showroom/pop-up store since she couldn’t afford a storefront. But she had to be careful not to use her apartment for selling jewelry too often since it violated the terms of her lease.
Sure, she could probably sell all her merchandise online. But in-person contact with customers was valuable. By talking to them about her pieces she made personal connections that created brand loyalty. And seeing their reactions gave her feedback that she used to improve every new collection. As much as she recognized social media as a valuable tool, she knew she couldn’t rely solely on it. If the best jewelry really was personal, she had to be personal.
After setting out the rings in clear plastic trays, she placed pieces from her Old New York collection on tables the way they had been displayed at the showcase. In addition to her Casterbridge letters, she had charms made from vintage subway tokens she’d found at a flea market on Elizabeth Street.
A buzz from the street-level intercom came ten minutes before the official eight p.m. start time, and she decided to let them wait. She needed to keep things somewhat organized.
Someone knocked on her door. She jumped up from her workbench and looked out the peephole.
Oh, no.
“Open this door right now!” It was her upstairs neighbor, an older woman named Evelyn Woods, who wore floral housedresses from the 1950s and whose sparse, bleached blond hair had lately taken on an unintended lavender hue. “I know you’re in there and I’ll call the landlord.”
It wasn’t an empty threat. Evelyn had already called the management company on her several times. Gemma had the strongly worded letters from her landlord to prove it.
Gemma opened the door. “Hi, Mrs. Woods. There’s no one in here . . . see?”
“No one’s in here because they’re all outside blocking the entrance! I just came back from Gristedes and there’s a line down the block. You’re a security hazard to this building. Letting all sorts of riffraff in here day and night . . .”
Gemma wanted to tell her that the “riffraff” were people simply buying jewelry—it wasn’t as if she was hosting a rave.
“It’s my college graduation, Mrs. Woods. I’m just getting together with a few friends.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “If you let all those people into this building, you’re going to have a big problem. Am I making myself clear?”
“Very clear,” Gemma said, just wanting her to leave so she could start letting people in. It was eight and the clock was ticking.
She watched Mrs. Woods shuffle off and pressed the button to buzz open the building. After tonight, she’d have to wait awhile before holding another sale. In the meantime, she’d focus her attention on her next big hurdle for getting her business off the ground: finding an investor. Thankfully, she already had a meeting set with a finance guy next week, an Israeli named Jacob Jabarin. And the only reason she was able to get in the door was one of her customers was Jacob Jabarin’s niece.
Pretty much all of Gemma’s customers were artists or young, in-the-know New Yorkers. Her work had been written about in cult magazines like Speciwomen or on trend-casting sites like Refinery29. Then six months ago, Hunter Schaefer from the show Euphoria was photographed wearing an onyx Rock Candy ring, and that pushed her brand into another stratosphere. Gemma could only hope that progress would be enough to attract money people.
The sound of customers heading up the stairs was louder than she’d like considering the run-in with Mrs. Woods, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
The first person through the door was Mae.
“I’m here to collect,” she said with a grin. Gemma had offered to let Mae pick out a piece of jewelry in exchange for the press pass.
Mae gravitated to the trays of Rock Candy rings, sifting through cushion-cut citrine, amethyst, and white topaz rings. There was one pink topaz and one violet-colored stone called iolite.
“Love this,” Mae said, picking up the citrine. “It looks like a canary diamond. I’ve been obsessed with these photos on your Instagram.”
In keeping with her belief that the best jewelry was meaningful, the Rock Candy collection was deeply personal. It grew out of her memory of—and longing for—her mother’s spectacular thirty-carat pink diamond engagement ring. As a young girl, she found that the gem seemed to overtake her entire hand. It was vividly pink but at the same time as clear as water. Her mother had promised Gemma it was her inheritance. Gemma hadn’t seen it since shortly after her mother’s death.
She was certain it would be on display at the Pavlin & Co party. How could it not? It was the most famous piece Pavlin & Co ever created.
And like everything else that had been taken from her, she was coming for it.