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Jewelry designer Jessica McCormack sees a “huge” opportunity in the US for her self-titled brand. “We know just from our small group of [existing] American clients [that there’s an] appetite for it, and so we’re betting on America,” she says.
The London-based jeweler’s first stake in the US market is a 3,200-square-foot store in a Beaux-Arts building on New York’s Madison Avenue. With this new location, which opened in May, McCormack brings her mission of “casualizing diamonds” to the States.
“Diamonds aren’t casual — they’re very precious, very expensive, very rare — so my take on that is, I want to make them fun and wearable and easy,” she explains. Rather than saving them for special occasions, she advocates wearing diamonds every day — not least in her Day Diamonds core collection.
Auction inspirations
The self-taught jewelry designer’s original career plan was to follow her father into the auction world, but an internship at Sotheby’s London, for which McCormack moved from New Zealand to the UK in 2007, proved to be a tipping point. The beauty and craftsmanship of the pieces she encountered in the auction house’s jewelry department, spanning 1920s Cartier to crown jewels, inspired her to launch her business in 2008.
Her contemporary designs continue to draw on the antique jewelry-making techniques she discovered during the internship. The Georgian-style cut-down setting that has become a signature of the brand was reportedly a feature of the east-west diamond engagement ring that American actor Zendaya wore to the Golden Globes in January. While the jeweler hasn’t confirmed that it made the high-profile piece, the distinctive ring generated a flurry of coverage for the brand — helpful in building its profile in the US.
‘Bigger and faster’
The New York venture comes on the back of strong growth for the company, which employs some 100 people. Turnover rose from GBP 28 million (about $37.7 million) in 2023 to GBP 36 million ($48.5 million) last year. Sales orders in the first quarter of 2025 were up nearly 90% year on year.
McCormack felt the time was right to expand into the US, where she has held trunk shows for several years, because the brand has built an “incredible” client base there. A third of the customers at its flagship townhouse in London’s Mayfair area are from the States. And before the brand launched its American website at the end of April, a third of sales by volume on its UK website were going to clients in the US.
Americans “buy bigger and faster” than the “pondering British,” says McCormack. She wants to make it easier for US consumers to shop her products, as buying fine jewelry online has its limits. “You really want to try it on. You want to feel it. If you’re spending a lot of money, you want to know that you’re going to like how it sits, and the weight.”
Exporting a business
In addition to the Mayfair townhouse, which opened in 2013 and accommodates the brand’s workshop, the company has had a second London store on Sloane Street since 2023. The Madison Avenue shop, which has 10 people on staff, is the company’s first outside London — though McCormack’s sister runs two Simon James concept stores in Auckland, New Zealand, that also stock the jewelry.
The brand is “plugging into” an established workshop in New York’s Diamond District to make as many pieces as possible for the Madison Avenue store, McCormack relates. Members of its London workshop team have been training US craftspeople in the company’s techniques. This approach to production was in the works for about a year before President Donald Trump introduced reciprocal tariffs in April for imports to the US, she points out — a fortunate turn of events, since the local manufacturing will help the company save on the import fees.
In what she calls “another happy accident,” the jeweler appointed New Yorker Zoë Kravitz as its first brand ambassador in May last year. The American actor was already a client and a friend, according to McCormack.
Other shores
New York is the first step in a wider expansion plan for the brand. McCormack hopes to open a second US outpost in Los Angeles within the next few years for bicoastal coverage, and is already on the lookout for a suitable space.
And the international growth might not stop with the States. McCormack would “like to have a look” at the Middle East, where she already has a customer base: Clients from the region make up the third-largest market for sales at her London stores, behind the UK and the US.
For now, however, the focus is firmly on New York, where the brand will hold a launch party in September. Besides her existing US clientele, McCormack believes there is an “untapped market out there, as…we’re a small London brand that lots of people have never heard of.”
Main image: Jessica McCormack in the Madison Avenue boutique. (Jessica McCormack)
