Danielle Marks is a jewelry designer based in New York City. When Danielle was a child, some of her earliest memories were of sitting with her grandmother and admiring her jewelry. Each piece evoked a memory related to a trip, a celebration, or a moment which ignited her fascination with gems and the stories they tell. As a teenager, she attended a workshop and made her own earrings. She had an intuitive understanding of jewelry and how to combine stones, which prompted her to declare her dream of becoming a designer one day.
Taking a more traditional academic path, she enrolled at the University of Miami to study advertising and art history. Since graduation, her experience in public relations has taught her how luxury brands develop creative concepts to communicate with their target audiences.
The onset of the pandemic forced Danielle to rethink her career path. She realized that she wanted to tell her own stories through the medium she had always loved: gemstones. Marks took an online course at the Gemological Institute of America that rekindled her passion for jewelry and launched her eponymous brand in 2022.
Throughout her work, the concept of two is an animating theme, influenced by nature and architecture. Marks is an identical twin, and so she has always explored the ideas of reflection and individuality. Her debut collection, Duality, focuses on the balance between the two, whether woven together, parallel, or in opposing positions or colors.
Her modern, clean, feminine forms are inspired by structures in architecture: the domes in Italy, the pyramid at The Louvre in Paris, the lobby of a grand hotel in New York. During her great grandmother's lifetime, she traveled extensively. Often saying "everywhere you look there's a postcard", she sought beauty in all her global adventures. With her camera in hand, Danielle has been exploring her own world, framing the beauty as she goes and pouring that sensibility into her work.
Designed to help wearers express themselves in creative ways, Danielle's forms explore both the presence of form as well as the empty space around it. To wear her jewelry is to think of what you are now, and what you could become in time.