< Culture & Style / Designer Profiles
Ana Khouri Creates the Jewelry We Covet on Her Own Terms
Designer Ana Khouri creates jewelry that expresses who she is as an artist—and we all want a piece.
Published: November 20, 2025
Photographed by: Michael Oliver Love
Written by: Sam Broekema
Ana Khouri is on a roll. Beyond celebrated showings of her high jewelry collection at the renowned art fair TEFAF, one sees the designer’s pieces worn by the most stylish red carpet denizens worldwide. Significantly, trendsetters like Chloë Sevigny and Jennifer Lawrence wear these jewels in off-duty moments to showcase their personal style. Stealth wealth progenitor brand The Row is the exclusive purveyor of her fine jewelry, which is something of a mic drop in the world of retail.
Khouri’s background in fine art provides her with an outsider’s perspective on the world of jewelry. There are no rules for how she presents her jewelry or how she crafts her exquisite treasures. This iconoclasticism has collectors vying for both her jewelry and her time. Scheduling the shoot and interview with the designer’s peripatetic schedule was akin to catching a butterfly. However, just like a natural diamond, good things come to those who wait, and divine timing is everything.
Meet the Author
- Sam Broekema is Editor-in-Chief of Only Natural Diamonds
- He has held roles including Fashion Editor, Executive Accessories Editor, and Market and Accessories Director at prestigious publications like Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle.
“It’s such good timing,” Khouri says when we connect. “I feel like I’ve never had such a, maybe ‘following’ is not the right word, but to have so many clients who really understand what we do. They see the difference between fine jewelry and high jewelry. They see how special it is, and they understand now that we don’t make collections, as such.” While, from an outsider’s perspective, Ana Khouri has long been recognized both by the jewelry and fashion industry as a great talent. She counts trendsetting celebrities such as Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman as her early fans, but the designer notes that she had an unorthodox entry into the craft.
Ana Khouri Sees Herself As An Artist First
Ana Khouri identifies as an artist first, which shapes how she approaches design. Studying fine art at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP) in São Paulo, she learned disciplines ranging from painting to installation to photography; immediately, it was sculpture that resonated.
“I had to visualize things in a way where I can touch them and feel them,” Khouri explains. “It has to be 3D for me to understand the shape; it’s always tactile.” The university provided students with the space to explore a myriad of disciplines, allowing them to discover the best way to express their creative vision. This freedom worked perfectly for Khouri, whose work the faculty chose to exhibit. “I had a show with naked women walking around wearing sculptures made of steel. My idea was to express both the feminine and the masculine, contrasting the warmth of the body with the cold steel, and day with night.
Afterward, someone came up to me and said, ‘Ana, I love what you’re doing, and I would love for you to adapt these pieces so I can wear them around my arms and my fingers.’ This resonated, and I realized I need functionality. In art, it can evaporate, it can burn. Once you start dealing with design, it has to make sense, not just the volume, but how it will open, and the weight of the piece.”
The nature of creation, how it forms, it’s something we can’t mimic. That’s so rare.
The designer did not accept this first commission, but an idea was planted, and she embraced a new emphasis on mechanics and a desire to make jewelry. She met with jewelers in São Paolo to learn how to adapt her sculptures. “I fell in love with the way I could melt the material. At the time, it was silver and later gold. I loved how metal could bend to my vision. Soon after, I began working with gems, so I went to study at GIA. I studied everything within this universe. I wanted the tools to best express my vision.”
Sculpture was still a priority for her, and eventually, the processes of making jewelry were closely linked with fine art. In Khouri’s work today, the sculpture acts as a study for finished jewelry. The texture, the thickness, the structure, everything begins in the abstract. From here, the concept for a piece of jewelry arrives. Even a texture meant for jewelry begins in the macro, often in steel, which the team scans digitally.
After this, the designer turns to sculpture again to ensure none of the inspiration has been lost. Khouri notes that many designers sketch, but this leaves the designer cold as she can’t feel the piece. “It’s a work that embodies a lot of handwork, a lot of creativity, discovering how I can produce something that is not what is out there. This is not because I want to be different but simply because I have ideas that I want to translate.”
From her first showing of jewelry in 2013, the designer wrestled with how to identify. “And then I realized that’s all bullshit, centered in my mind. And that was the point. It was very much me trying to figure out what I wanted out of this world, combining art and wearing it and making sense of it.”
The Impact of Responsibly-Sourced Materials and the Power of Nature
The latest collection emphasizes the importance of materials, beginning with the color of gold. “Creating brown gold was an incredible process. It was a form of chemistry. I wanted to formulate something that is just ours, in 18K. This is a challenge, because when you change the color of gold, you can lose the quality.” This was not an invention solely for the sake of newness. “The brown gold started from a desire to make something closer to nature, which can be a signature.”
A scroll through Ana Khouri’s Instagram reveals bucolic landscapes, detailed shots of a leaf, and images of the designer herself, sylphlike, in woodland settings. “I feel my full self in nature. I have an awareness that I am connected to sounds and textures. I am most connected to myself, in a way. I have this idea that we are here on this earth to remember who we are. For me, spirituality is about finding yourself within yourself.”
When I am inspired by nature, it’s not that I want to mimic a leaf, bud, or ladybug; it’s about conjuring a feeling.
This desire to more intuitively express her inspiration led to much research. “While we worked out how to make brown gold, we realized that it was not just about having a special sauce. It is about all the steps we take to make the gold.”
In these moments of research and reflection, the designer feels most energized. Though she doesn’t seek to imitate. “When I am inspired by nature, it’s not that I want to mimic a leaf, bud, or ladybug; it’s about conjuring a feeling. I think we are educated to think that we are the center of the universe, but it’s actually not about you. I think life’s purpose is to understand yourself, and to peel the layers of the onion and remember who you are.”
A sense of personal responsibility led Ana Khouri to discover the most sustainable way of working. “Because I leave a footprint as a jeweler, I needed to see how I could evolve in a way that is responsible. We all consume so much, but if you start by being a little bit more aware of your connection to everything, you start wanting to do things in a better way.”
This led the designer to work with fair-mined gold and old cut diamonds. Materials and ethics, together with personal responsibility, are at the core of the Ana Khouri universe. “And that’s where I think it’s all connected to natural diamonds. How can someone even think about lab-grown? To find these amazing, rare diamonds and stones —and be able to work with them —something that comes from the center of the earth. Because of the nature of creation, how it forms, it’s something we can’t mimic. That’s so rare.” This focus on the mystery of nature also led to recent high jewelry creations featuring several antique cuts.
Ana Khouri Is a Master of Her Craft
The perfectly imperfect is a design trope that resonates across many media, but nowhere is it more perfectly realized than in the handiwork of a jeweler. The process of seeking mastery of material and inspiration resonates deeply with Ana Khouri’s design process.
“One thing that is very clear is that what I do is not perfect; it can always be better. We strive to learn every step of the way, and to be alert to what we could do better…To create something that is like a vision of what jewelry is today, what do we want to use? Design tells us who we are today, informed by how we live.” It’s important to note that there is no better model of Ana Khouri’s jewelry than the designer herself. Her personal style and inspiration are part and parcel of what her clients seek.
Because I leave a footprint as a jeweler, I needed to see how I could evolve in a way that is responsible.
It is telling that she is hard-pressed to name a particular style icon or to find a throughline for what might influence her work. She muses that, “I think we vibrate in a connection. Trust and know who you are, while removing all these ideas of perfection that come from Instagram or books. I may love the style of that person, but that was their journey at that time in that society. It is not yours. So, when you start to realize that you have your own energy and way of thinking, and you honor that, I think it becomes real.”
There is no relying on the beauty of past collections to feed Ana Khouri’s spirit. Each new series opens up a potential dialogue with what is to come. Khouri offers that, “I always think what’s next is going to be the best we’ve done. I’m learning that the process is the way. I want to feel like what’s next is the result of everything that I’ve been doing.”
She explains, “Looking at the brand of Ana Khouri, and at me as an artist, I think it’s when I can deepen my work, bring in more textures, more colors, dare to experiment with new materials, and honor the materials that are natural. Through all this, I want to empower women. It’s almost like it’s something deeper than something visual. I think that translates because you have to feel the pieces, you have to understand how a piece came to life, and how years of work make something unique.”
To sum up an artist, a designer, is not easy and probably not a good idea. But Ana Khouri says it well. “The thing is that I’m playing myself. I’m being myself, and I’m doing what feels right to me in this experience of life. I think that anyone who follows their most intrinsic self in a way of discovery through design, through a way of putting it all together, even if I may not like the final result, it’s incredible and it’s amazing because it’s them.”
Photographer: Michael Oliver Love
Stylist: Jermaine Daley
Hair Stylist: Jerome Cultrera
Makeup Artist: Linda Gradin
Manicurist: Yukie Miyakawa
Creative Production: Petty Cash Production
Lighting Director: Eliot Oppenheimer
Photo Assistant: Matt Roady
Styling Assistant:Romy Safiyah
Tailor: Maria Del Greco
