Sophie Bille Brahe Opens First U.S. Boutique Imbued With Her Danish Whimsy and Allure
Spend any time on TikTok looking into Scandinavian “It” girl style and Sophie Bille Brahe’s fine jewelry is sure to show up. Her creations exude a modern, ethereal storytelling that is quintessentially Danish — a bit unexpected, whimsical yet minimal and uniquely her.
Not that she is totally under the radar — she has a mix of her “dream girls” wearing pieces, including Rihanna, Madonna, Alicia Vikander and more. She sells in a range of well-known jewelry boutiques globally, but the brand keeps a well maintained if-you-know-you-know mystique.
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That might be about to change with her first U.S. boutique on New York’s Upper East Side opening in November, anchoring her brand in a market she reports is her fastest growing. It’s a new chapter that has been nearly three years in the making. “It’s been the right move for a very long time,” she said during an interview from her Copenhagen studio. “But it’s for me, it’s needed to be something where I felt it was completely the right space.”
Landing at 1000 Madison Avenue, she is in esteemed company, a stone’s throw from every major luxury boutique uptown. Her clientele is sure to discover her now. “I didn’t want to leave,” she said with a laugh of the space she chose.
By appointment only, the store will open on Nov. 13 with a discreet door, small plaque and call button at street level, maintaining her cloaked allure. The boutique is situated on the second floor, a point of difference that worked well for her Copenhagen flagship. “It doesn’t really work when there’s a lot of people browsing around at the same time,” she said of her Denmark store. “So, you enter a very curated, very personal space,” which is exactly what she wanted for her first U.S store.
Many said she was out of her mind to not have the store at street level, “but for me, I think this has been our recipe on how we do business, and I feel like we need to do it exactly how I feel it fits the jewelry.”
Bille Brahe has been quietly testing the market Stateside for years with a traveling showroom concept, showing at luxury hotels by appointment. “Our clients, they want to have a special experience when shopping,” she explained. Her boutique will be an extension of that concept, telling the full breadth of her storytelling through jewelry, she said.
Clients will be greeted with a Dinesen wooden floor setting the Danish minimalist mood. Furnishings are by B?rge Mogensen — “all an elevated version of what every Dane has a memory of eating dinner on,” Bille Brahe said. She chose an extremely rare Poul Henningsen lamp and designed a cloud table and a shell motif for space. “For my Copenhagen boutique, I wanted it to be like a Scandinavian palazzo, and it’s the same we’re doing for New York,” she said, adding that she chose pearly lace white curtains for the windows, casting the boutique in a soft light.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Peggy Guggenheim and in her house in Venice you can see pictures of zebra all over the place,” she said of the accents that add a bit of zing on a Mats Theselius chair and sofa, along with Poul Kj?rholm chairs.
“For us to compete, it needs to feel like each little element has been put into this space in a way that makes complete sense for me,” she explained of her world building. Cases will house her pieces based on her “families” including Ocean, Ensemble, Lettre de Lumière, Coeur, Escargot and Fleur, with a yet-to-be-debuted piece based on her signature tennis bracelets that will be unique to the New York location.
Because the shop will be appointment-only, guests will be greeted with a thoughtful curation of pieces based on their need. When in town, Bille Brahe will offer a unique bespoke experience, “so our clients can come and be a part of the design process,” alongside the creator. Bridal is a big part of her current business; she has an exclusive bridal collection featuring unique fancy cuts launching in February in New York.
U.S. clients, she said, tend to gravitate to more classic, heavier, diamond pieces. Bestsellers until now have been her tennis collier necklaces, with classic iterations followed by styles “where it has been twisted with stone [diamond] hearts graduating in sizes” being standouts.
Exclusively using white diamonds in her work, she is “drawn to the purity” of the classic gemstone. “For me, there is a very clear link between the sky and the ground when it comes to jewelry. Visually diamonds remind me of stars, they have the same glisten, and they give you the same feeling, and yet their creation is so tied to the earth.”
The store includes a selection of glassware and jewelry boxes, too, things she sees as “a prolongation of the jewelry and a true reflection of my universe.“
“The U.S. customer uses jewelry in a different way than Europeans. It’s used to mark a lot of things during your year life and I think they are not afraid to stack a lot. I also think [there’s] the personal element. They love that the jewelry tells a story,” she explained, highlighting her Lettre de Lumière collection, “which can represent your husband or your child. Americans love it.”
Bille Brahe trained as a goldsmith, part of an historical tradition in Denmark that takes four-and-a-half years. “I needed a craft to somehow support my ideas that if nobody liked what I was doing, then I could work anyways,” she said.
It’s a level of tactile storytelling that comes through in her creations. She went on to attend London’s Royal College of Art, with plans to move to Paris and work for someone else, but a chance meeting with Julie Gilhart, then at Barneys New York, changed it all. “She was like, ‘Sophie, you have a talent, you have an obligation to do your own jewelry.’” She launched with her Croissant De Lune in 2007 and has grown from there.
“For me, it’s somehow about actually cleaning my headspace,” she said of creating her personal approach that resonates with customers. “It’s just like feeling what’s inside me.”
“When I look back at the collections, I can always see exactly how I was feeling at the moment. So it’s kind of, I think, really personal in a way, and it is my way of understanding my surroundings.”
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