Inside Foundrae’s Madison Avenue jewelry store, rows of wooden drawers line a wall beneath glass cabinets. Each drawer holds one or two pieces — a large carved malachite four-leaf clover pendant, a faceted pink opal heart pendant with a diamond clasp — accompanied by a handwritten card describing the design’s artistry and symbolism.
Customers are encouraged to open the drawers and peek inside.
At a time when luxury consumers are more often shopping online, and fine jewelry is typically presented under locked glass cabinets, the brand’s founder, Beth Hutchens, is luring shoppers with discovery, touch and a sense of place. She calls the compartments “Discovery Drawers,” an invitation to uncover one-of-a-kind pieces, which range in style, material and price and cannot be found online.
“There are less and less owner operated stores now and many more stores that follow formulas that leave very little room to develop a sense of awe,” Ms. Hutchens said.
The approach appears to be working. Over the past 18 months, the 11-year-old company has expanded rapidly, opening stores on New York’s Upper East Side, in Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Fla.; and Aspen, Colo., with an outpost in London planned for May. Its original flagship is in downtown Manhattan in a former 1867 warehouse, where Hutchens also has a jewelry workshop.
Rather than cookie-cutter boutiques, each outpost is uniquely designed to reflect its location. In Palm Beach, walls glow with verre églomisé panels gilded and painted with palm fronds and abalone shell details. In Aspen, green marble floors with brass inlay, jewel-toned velvet furnishings and embossed leather walls evoke a cozy alpine library. The Madison Avenue shop is coated entirely in red with shelves lined with Ms. Hutchens’s favorite books, vintage glassware and curios.
When Ms. Hutchens started the business in downtown Manhattan in 2015 (with her ex-husband, who later sold his share), it was a personal enterprise. At the time, she was 43. She had left her role as chief executive of Rebecca Taylor, the fashion brand she co-founded in her 20s, and was considering what’s next.
“Language can feel intimidating,” she said. “Symbolism is a universal language.” On her path to self-discovery, she created a lexicon of emblems — a lion for courage and strength, an arrow for direction, celestial motifs for fate and faith — and chose 18-karat gold jewelry as the medium because, she said, “it has intrinsic value and is passed from one generation to the next.”
Symbolic jewelry is hardly new. In recent years, countless jewelers created versions of emblematic gold pieces. And for centuries jewelry has been worn to signify empowerment, luck and faith. But for Ms. Hutchens, it’s the core of her business and being.
Prices run the gamut, with medallions starting around $1,500 (about 1,271 euros) and larger ones with diamonds ranging from $5,000 to $7,000. An 18-karat gold necklace with a pendant and diamonds from the new Infinite Gratitude collection is $21,700.
Each jewel comes with a printed card that describes its meaning. An Internal Compass gold medallion is engraved with horizon and diamond sun rays, with the accompanying text: “Therein lies a sense of limitless freedom, vast, boundless, expansive, open.” A Dream medallion with a star, arrow and diamond triangle reminds the wearer “dreams can be actualized.”
Ms. Hutchens, a 14th-generation practicing Quaker, describes jewelry as a tangible connection between inner life and outward expression.
She piles on her jewels, rings on every finger, necklaces stacked and with multiple medallions that reference family, friends, faith. Favorites include an enamel cigar band.
“I love looking down at my finger and seeing the color, design and meaning,” she said. She also wears pieces from the Infinite Gratitude collection, with wheat sheaves and infinity motifs that are meant to represent abundance, continuity and spirituality.
The philosophy has attracted a devoted following, including the actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, who discovered the brand in its early days and made it part of her wardrobe.
“Foundrae redefined what fine jewelry could be for me,” Ms. Paltrow said in an email. “You can build your own story through charms and medallions that feel deeply personal to the chapter of life you’re in.”
Another collector, Sofia Blanco in Miami, discovered Foundrae in 2020 when she became a mother and wanted jewelry that felt meaningful. She visited the downtown New York store where she purchased medallions with her family’s birth dates and stones and zodiac symbols. “It’s not just beautiful,” she said in an email. “It’s the meaning behind it that makes it beautiful.
Ms. Hutchens’s spirituality was shaped by faith and her parents who, she said, “taught me that everything I wanted, that everything I wanted to be, was already inside of me.” She also grew up in Brownsville, Texas, near the Mexico border, where she said mysticism and faith traditions blended into everyday life.
Despite outside investors and growth, Ms. Hutchens has resisted turning the business into a formula. “The investors sit on the board, and they let me follow my instinct, and I think that’s a big part of our success,” she said.
That instinct has been to ensure Foundrae’s stores remain personal and rooted in experiences and discovery. Shelves are lined with books by writers she admires, including Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, which supports her notion that assembling a necklace is like building your story. “Each medallion is like a chapter memorializing specific moments in our lives.”
The designer’s quirkiness also comes into play. She created hidden miniature rooms, each uniquely furnished, tucked into the walls of every store, most built by Ms. Hutchens herself.
“I collected miniatures since childhood,” she said. “I imagined little invisible people, or fairies, living their unseen lives among us, leaving behind clues like a half-eaten slice of cake, an unmade bed.”
“It’s a reminder,” she said, “that there is more to life than what can be seen.”
Even practical elements are designed as theater. Beyond the uniqueness of each location, Hutchens has an in-store jeweler (in every store except Dallas) who sits behind glass to personalize pieces and work on jewelry, adding to the experience.
Ms. Hutchens said, whenever she could, she visited the stores and met with clients to hear their stories.
“I love what I do,” she said. “It feeds my soul. I don’t have a stopping point. That would feel too much like a period at the end of a sentence for me. I’m more into ellipses.”
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