Sara Beltran: The Mexican Designer Turning Ocean Dreams into Jewelry
Antakly Projects · The Conversation
Dezso
Sara Beltrán
On the ocean as an obsession, three years carving stones in Jaipur, and jewelry as a secret between you and the sea
New York · Mexico · Jaipur
Why this conversation
I came to Sara Beltrán’s work the way I think you are meant to, by noticing a single object on someone else’s wrist and needing to know where it had been. A shark tooth set in gold. A shell that still looked as if it had just been lifted from the sand. The pieces carry their origins so openly that they read less like jewellery than like field notes from somewhere warm and very far away.
We share an early address, the orbit of Italian Vogue, where she assisted the stylist Joe McKenna and where I spent my own formative years close by. But the fashion lineage is not what pulled me toward this conversation. It was the travelling. Sara lives between New York, Mexico, and Jaipur, and her line is the record of that movement, stones carved by hand in India, teeth gathered off the coast of Mexico, a sensibility assembled out of places rather than trends. I wanted to ask her about the gathering.
Jewelry should feel like a secret between you and the sea.Sara Beltrán
Born from a shell
The origin story is almost too neat to be true, which is usually a sign that it is. Six years into her styling life, assisting on a Bruce Weber shoot at Virginia Beach, Sara picked an Anadara shell out of the sand, cast it in gold, and turned it into a bracelet. A compliment from the designer Tracy Feith did the rest. Dezso, a word she glosses as desire, was founded in 2006, and within a few years the pieces had found their way onto Ashley Olsen, Karolina Kurková, and others.
She works mostly in eighteen karat gold, with some silver, and stones she has carved by hand in Jaipur into shells, teeth, and other shapes drawn from the water. Polki diamonds left natural and uncut, rose cuts with their flat backs and domed tops, fossils, and real shark teeth sourced mainly from Mexico. No two pieces come out the same, which is the point.
The Conversation
How did Dezso begin?
It began on a beach, almost by accident. I was working as a styling assistant, on a Bruce Weber shoot at Virginia Beach, and I found a little shell in the sand. I cast it in gold and made it into a bracelet, mostly for myself. Tracy Feith saw it and told me I should be making these, and that was really the push. I founded the line in 2006. The first thing I felt, once strangers started wearing the pieces, was disbelief, and then this enormous joy. Seeing someone you have never met wearing something you made, and wearing it happily, that is still the magic of it for me.
The ocean runs through everything you make. Where does that come from?
The ocean is my obsession. Shells, teeth, the raw beauty of nature. I grew up surrounded by making, my mother is a painter and a ceramicist and she pulled me into her world very early, so I never really separated beauty from the act of building it by hand. The sea just became my material. Each piece, for me, whispers a little of shipwrecks and sunsets.
You spent three years in Jaipur. What did India give you?
Almost everything technical, and a great deal that is not technical at all. I went to learn about stones and to learn how to carve, and I stayed because I fell in love with the colours, the textiles, the architecture, the artisans. It is a crazily beautiful, exotic country, like Candy Land for creative people. My Mexico and India life represents my two worlds. I am proud to be Mexican, but I would not be who I am without India.
Tell me about the materials. You are unusually loyal to them.
I am. The diamonds I love are the honest ones, polki that are natural and uncut, rose cuts that have been around since the sixteenth century. The shark teeth are real and unaltered, mostly from Mexico, and each one is chosen for the piece it is going to live in. The carved stones are all done by hand in Jaipur, which is why no two are ever identical. I would rather have that variation than a perfect repeated thing.
Your little black book. Who and what do you keep close?
A few names I return to, with a word for each:
- PhotographersMario Testino, romantic. Bruce Weber, a master of the moment.
- MagazinesItalian Vogue, art incarnate. Teen Vogue, my cheerleaders.
- DesignersBalenciaga, edgy chic. Missoni, bikini royalty. 3.1 Phillip Lim, effortless cool.
And the hardest part of building all of this from New York?
New York does not let you coast. Every single day demands the hustle, and you feel it. But that pressure is also what keeps the work honest. The city does not reward standing still.
What stays with me is how little of this is about luxury in the usual sense. The value of a Dezso piece is in the provenance, a shell from one coast, a tooth from another, a stone carved by a hand in Jaipur, gathered slowly by someone who travels in order to keep finding them. Each one really is a kind of secret kept with the sea.
dezsosara.com
@dezsobybel
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