Sybil and David Yurman Reflect on Their Marriage, Jewelry Label in New Book
Sybil and David Yurman are giving an intimate look into their marriage and creative partnership that has spanned over 50 years in their new Phaidon book, “Sybil and David Yurman: Artists and Jewelers,” which comes out Tuesday.
With never-before-seen materials and in-depth interviews edited by curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot, the Yurmans document how their backgrounds in art informed the aesthetic and popular motifs of the David Yurman brand. The couple goes indepth discussing how the David Yurman brand helped revolutionize the jewelry market, be it by utilizing new materials, design innovations or introducing new marketing methods.
More from WWD
Here, the couple talks about their process putting together the Phaidon book, how they created pillar jewelry franchise like Cable and Silver Ice and the future of the David Yurman brand under the leadership of their son, Evan Yurman.
WWD: What was the process like putting together the Phaidon book?
David Yurman: I’m a maker. I like to make things and move forward and then looking backwards, I look at designs I’ve done from years ago — maybe 10 years ago — I still find something in them that brings me forward. This was a project we committed to, but I was the last one on board. [Sybil and Thierry-Maxime Loriot] were working on it and my name’s on the door, so I better jump in and do this. It was actually a very rewarding, very creative process. At first it was a struggle, looking backwards is a whole different view than looking forward, and it has great value. I was very much surprised.
WWD: The book goes into detail about both of your backgrounds in art — Sybil, yours in painting and David, yours in sculpture. How did that inform the foundation of the jewelry brand?
Sybil Yurman: [The book] was from our earliest days together in the ‘60s, where we were part of the downtown art world of New York and California, and where I began as a painter and a ceramicist. David’s earliest mentors were helping shape him as a sculptor and basically led him to see new visions of what jewelry could unfold from his sculpture. It was really nice looking back in a lot of ways.
D.Y.: I was a terrible student, but [sculpture] I could focus on. I said this is what I want to do with my life. I knew that at the age of 16 or 17 and I actually sold pieces in high school. So, not only can I enjoy doing this wonderful thing — I wasn’t thinking I was making art — I was making figures and I was just raptured in doing this and I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.
WWD: What were those early years of the David Yurman jewelry brand like?
S.Y.: There were a lot of choices that we had to make and really narrow down to what were our eureka moments and the serendipity that changes everything. One of those choices is sharing that journey with a partner and what it means to collaborate and learn to collaborate. That was a really big thing for us — doing that together. David always says that “those who share go far, while those who don’t, just go it alone,” so it was a question of learning to develop a language between the two of us and the people that worked with us, and being able to share that creative process. We really had to respect the intent of each other’s designs and really pay homage to the other’s process. Then we had to learn how to fuse the two and collaborate.
WWD: Your strategy at times was considered unorthodox, specifically the way you marketed the jewelry altogether instead of dividing by category as was the industry norm. Why was this the approach you chose to take for the business?
D.Y.: It was natural because the first third of our lives were involved in art. You don’t sell art under the gallery name and you don’t sell jewelry that you make as part of your art form. It just happens to be in the jewelry world, and you let the jeweler put his name on it. It’s your creation. It’s your heart and soul, so it’s sold under your name.
S.Y.: We decided that we would only sell to stores where the name David Yurman would be put into a case and the collections would be shown in their entirety. When we first started, you didn’t have a name in a case. What happened was that rings were in one case, amethyst was in one section, blue topaz was in another and silver was not important.
WWD: Speaking of silver, one of your most innovative collections that caught the industry off guard was Silver Ice, where you set diamonds onto silver. How did you come up with this idea?
S.Y.: David believed silver was a noble metal. It was to be used in an elegant, luxurious way. People use diamonds in gold. Why can’t we use diamonds in silver? No one was doing it. They didn’t believe it could be done because silver is softer than gold, that it wouldn’t hold the diamonds. So David developed techniques to make it feasible to set the diamonds in silver, or set it into mixing our jewelry, which was silver with gold end caps and setting diamonds in that as well. For us, it was a wonderful experience doing it.
WWD: The book also gives insight into the Cable collection, which is arguably David Yurman’s most famous motif. Why do you think that style has resonated so much with customers?
D.Y.: Really because of Sybil. Like I said, I just like to make things. Sybil is in a sense a very in-depth marketer. She heard this at a trade show; we were showing our jewelry and someone came up that was a very knowledgeable retailer. She said, “David, I buy your jewelry, but every time I come, I see so many new things. I don’t know what represents you.” Sybil said, “People have to know you for something.” We did Cable, we did Mesh, we did pearls, we did big gemstones and we had different styles. They all sort of felt the same. They were based on classic form and they’re based on the ancient use of beautiful colors. She said, “We have to choose” and at one point she said, “I think we ought to choose the motif of Cable rather than Mesh” — rather than multiple beads and connections and chains. Let’s just be the Cable company because we could do all kinds of things with this form.
WWD: David Yurman is now under the leadership of your son, Evan Yurman. What do you anticipate the brand will look like under his direction?
D.Y.: Our son Evan was brought up in the business and was making jewelry at the same age that I was at 16. He was making skateboard jewelry for a big skateboard company and he made men’s jewelry. We had a men’s business and as he got older he wanted to take on more responsibility. He created the men’s line for us. We had some styles, but Evan’s influence on the market in men’s jewelry, you can ask anyone, it was the number-one creative men’s collection. It says David Yurman, but it really is 90 percent Evan. From the design to the manufacturing to the marketing, all the way through.
Best of WWD
Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
