Joie DiGiovanni

Joie DiGiovanni

Joie DiGiovanni, a Philadelphia native, started designing jewelry in the early 2010s while recovering from a serious car accident that left her with several autoimmune conditions. Her signature is baroque South Sea and Tahitian pearls set against leather and diamonds, a pairing she traces back to how a pearl itself forms, as an irritant transformed into something beautiful.

Jewelry

DiGiovanni's first pieces sold because customers at the Philadelphia-area boutique where she worked kept buying the jewelry right off her, not because a marketing plan told them to. That instinct for pearls that look worn-in rather than precious carries through this grid. Leather knotting shows up next to South Sea pearls in a way that keeps the whole thing from feeling like a special-occasion drawer.

More Jewelry

A second round of the pearl-and-leather formula that has anchored the label since it went full time in 2016 with family backing. DiGiovanni has said she wanted pearls people actually wear, not the strand passed down and left in a box, and these pieces are built for jeans and sneakers as much as anything dressier.

Our honest take

The recovery-into-business-plan origin story could easily feel like packaging, but DiGiovanni's output has been consistent for well over a decade now, which is the part that actually matters. Baroque pearls are an easy idea to say out loud and a harder one to keep interesting collection after collection. This label has mostly managed it.