Spin-Off Sensation: Métier by Tomfoolery Marks over a Decade of Success

Contemporary jewelry galleries present jewelry as an art form, showcasing a curation of independent designers and encouraging visitors to consider their work as such. Few galleries produce their own collections, and even fewer are able to sell them widely as an offshoot brand. One such gallery is Tomfoolery London under creative director Laura Kay.  

Tucked away in the city’s leafy Muswell Hill neighborhood, the airy, understated space holds the work of designers like Brooke Gregson, Franny E and WWAKE. The gallery is well-established on the city’s design scene, with a reputation as a respected under-the-radar address. Husband-and-wife team Nicki and Peter Kay opened it in 1994, and Laura, their daughter, took over in 2013, bringing an artistic sensibility she’d honed through a background in photography and luxury-industry visual production. Tomfoolery now champions independent designers and holds two selling exhibitions a year: the Love Ring alternative bridal showcase in the spring, and Art Ring for one-of-a-kind rings in the winter. 

In 2015, Kay launched Métier — a refined in-house collection of pale, flattering 9-karat-gold jewelry that complements her choices for the gallery itself. “I always felt there was a gap in the market for an accessible entry point into gold,” she explains. “I’m glad we stood firmly behind 9-karat, even when people questioned the decision. Its versatility has definitely worked in our favor; the lighter yellow hue pairs well with a range of metals, which means clients can integrate it easily into their existing collections.”  

Inspiring design 

Over the past 10 years, Métier has proven those initial detractors wrong with its steady growth, its broadening collector base, and the 60 stores that now carry its pieces internationally. 

Kay showed the most recent Métier collection this past October in a sun-drenched Paris showroom a few streets away from the Louvre. The fall sunlight illuminated the mineral hues of the Tesserae necklace, inspired by the colors of the desert at nightfall. Diamond earring charms glinted, and hard-stone prism pendants lined up in punchy rows. The extensive collection ranged from tiny huggies — which sell especially well in Japan, Métier’s strongest market in terms of stockists — to bold shield rings, finely engraved initial pendants, and a rainbow of hard-stone charms for necks and ears. 

While manufactured components like clasps and chains can be hard to trace fully, Kay is proud to say her designs now contain 95% recycled gold: “It’s an ongoing priority to understand the full journey of every element we use.” 

Her photography background has shaped her design approach. “I’ve always looked at form through the lens of color, contrast and detail,” she says. “That visual discipline naturally evolved into jewelry, where I focus on how stones interact with skin, how shapes sit on the body, and how a piece can be refined to feel effortless in daily life.”  

Cut out for daily wear 

From an initial collection of versatile pieces, Métier has evolved into an eclectic, individualized line of delicate jewels that stack for a statement. The recent Tesserae collection represented a shift into something altogether more audacious, using hand-cut stone forms in color combinations that recall skylines and landscapes.  

“Tesserae allowed us to explore artisan stone-cutting techniques while introducing a unique level of individuality to a necklace that still felt attainable,” says Kay. Here again, her instincts as a visual artist came into play: “Coming from photography, I’ve always been drawn to tone, shade and shadow. This collection became a way to translate those visual impressions into slices of gemstones.” 

In Paris, Kay paired slouchy tailoring with an eclectic cast of rings across both hands, layered pendants around her neck, and gold hoops and plaques climbing her ears, demonstrating how wearers could style her designs for the everyday. 

An ear for creativity 

That breadth of styling options may be the key to Métier’s international success.  

On the wholesale end, buyers for US stores are “incredibly confident when it comes to styling [their customers], especially the ear curation,” she relates. “They don’t shy away from taking creative risks.” On her direct-to-consumer website, meanwhile, 65% of visits are from the US, and the extensive earring category is a favorite there as well. Kay puts this down to versatility: “Curating an ear is highly personal, almost like building a visual narrative. It gives the wearer a chance to be expressive without overpowering their whole look.” 

A decade on, Métier has become more than an extension of the Tomfoolery aesthetic; it’s now a brand in its own right, well-positioned to weather the uncertainty stemming from recent fluctuations in gold and diamond prices. Kay, who has enjoyed the “slow, considered growth” thus far, says “a standalone store is definitely something we’d love in the future.” Métier fans in the US and beyond will be keeping their perfectly curated ears to the ground for news of that development. 

Main image: Laura Kay. (Métier by Tomfoolery)