Chapter 8: I Almost Deleted the Email
I Almost Deleted the Email
On being featured in British Vogue, the two pieces they chose, and what it means for a one-person studio to be seen.
I. The Email
On May 13, an email landed in my inbox from someone at Condé Nast.
I almost deleted it.
Bravais is a one-person studio. I run it alongside my research lab at Northeastern University, where I am a Chemical Engineering and BioMaterials Science professor. I carve every Stone & Wild original from wax by hand at my bench in Somerville. I launched the brand in 2025. I have no publicist, no sales team, no press strategy. An email inviting me to feature in British Vogue's Jewellery Designer Profile, an invite-only placement that very few independent jewellery brands worldwide are ever selected for, so, at first glance, I assumed it was spam.
I stalked her on LinkedIn before I replied.
She was real. The invitation was real. And on June 16, 2026, the same day I'm writing this, the British Vogue July issue hit newsstands. Zoë Kravitz on the cover. Bravais Fine Jewelry on the Jewellery Designer Profile page, and live on vogue.co.uk as a digital retail feature.
I still can't quite believe it.
II. The Two Pieces
I submitted a pile of photographs, images I took and styled myself (with Ryan's help), in my studio, in Vermont, and outside on the coast in Hawaii. Vogue chose two for this first of three issues Bravais will be included in. "How did you find me?" I asked. My Instagram - I wasn't posting to the void after all!
The Flash Necklace, Print
The Flash Necklace is TruSilver, a tarnish-resistant, nickel-free silver alloy, set with an Australian boulder opal and a blue topaz accent. The opal is the anchor. Australian boulder opals form when silica-rich water seeps into ironstone and deposits in thin seams, producing the characteristic play-of-color: the shifting interference patterns of red, green, blue, and violet that move across the surface as the viewing angle changes. No two Australian opals produce the same pattern. This one flashes blue-green in cool light and ignites orange-red spots in warm light. It is not a gentle stone.
The blue topaz above it is a complementary anchor, a cooler, quieter stone that frames the opal's spectacle without competing with it. The whole piece hangs close to the neck and moves constantly. The Flash Necklace is named for what it does: it catches light unexpectedly. You're wearing it, and then you're not thinking about it, and then it flashes.
The Pharaoh Eye Ring , Digital
For the digital feature on vogue.co.uk, Vogue chose the Pharaoh Eye Ring. This is a different kind of piece entirely.
The center stone is a 1.35 CT natural tri-color Songea sapphire. Songea is a mining region in southern Tanzania, pronounced TSON-gah, that displays red, amber-gold, and deep teal across its face depending on the viewing angle and light source. The color is produced by the incorporation of natural trace elements during crystal growth. The hexagonal growth zoning is visible under magnification in the blue and yellow zones, which are a direct record of how the crystal formed: different crystal faces are simultaneously active during a single growth event, each incorporating chromophores at different rates due to face surface geometry.
The stone is beryllium diffusion-treated (BE diffusion), which is standard for Songea-origin corundum and intensifies the color saturation while preserving the natural zoning. I disclose this in every listing and every description. Treatment transparency is not optional at Bravais. You deserve to know exactly what you are wearing.
The setting is hand-carved from wax: an anatomically detailed eye form in 14K CSC gold, with engraved upper and lower lashes framing the stone, and eight round diamonds set in the lid. The pupil is the sapphire. The eye looks back at you. At 11 grams of solid gold, it has real presence on the hand. This is a stone like no other.
III. What It Means to Make Things By Hand
The Bravais copy that ran in Vogue says "hand-fabricated." I want to be more precise here, on my own page, because precision matters to me.
Stone & Wild originals are hand-carved. The process begins with a block of jeweler's wax and a set of carving tools. I carve the form I want, every surface, every curve, every detail that will eventually catch light, from scratch, by hand, at my bench. That wax original goes to Jewel-Craft, my casting house, which produces the metal casting via lost-wax casting: the wax is invested in plaster, burned out, and molten metal is poured into the void. The casting comes back to me for stone setting, finishing, and quality review.
This matters because it means every piece in the Stone & Wild collection begins with a decision. Not a CAD file. Not a catalog selection. A decision about form, made by hand, that cannot be undone once the wax is cut. The Pharaoh Eye took hours of carving to get the lash anatomy right. The Flash Necklace required a setting that would let the opal be securely set to protect the more fragile stone. These are problems you solve with your hands and your eyes, in real time, at a bench.
I am also a neuroengineering professor. The bench in my studio and the bench in my lab are different surfaces with different tools and completely different problems. But the discipline is the same: you look closely, you work precisely, and you do not hide what you find.
That's the animating principle of Bravais. Not hiding what you find. Treatment transparency on every colored stone. Honest pricing at 2x wholesale on any curated pieces, clearly disclosed. Clarity grades called out plainly, including the ones that aren't flattering. One-of-a-kind stones named and sourced, not genericized.
Vogue did not choose Bravais because of a publicist or a press strategy. They chose it because they found the work and thought it belonged on that page. I believe that happened because the work is honest. The stones are real, the craft is visible, it is heirloom art, and the copy doesn't soft-pedal what anything is.
IV. What Comes Next
The July issue is the first of three. Bravais will appear in British Vogue across July, August, and September 2026, a different piece, a different story, each month. I am not sure which pieces will be selected by the Vogue team!
This fall also brings the launch of VITAL by Bravais: a fine jewelry medical ID collection built for patients with invisible illness, with hand-applied vitreous enamel in disease awareness colorways, a QR code linking to a wearer-controlled health profile, and a donation component to disease societies and research labs with every purchase. The Kickstarter launches September 15, 2026. More on that very soon.
For now: the July issue is on newsstands and you can subscribe here. The Pharaoh Eye Ring is live on vogue.co.uk. The Flash Necklace is available at bravaisfinejewelry.org.
I'm glad I didn't delete the email.
Abigail N. Koppes Ph.D.
Founder, Bravais Fine Jewelry
Chemical Engineering & BioMaterials Science · Northeastern University
Somerville, MA