According to Instagram, watery Gowanus is a prime candidate for Copenhagen-ization. We’ll see about that; in the meantime, those longing for a Danish treat, right here, right now, need look no further than Sophie Bille Brahe’s just-opened Madison Avenue jewelry boutique. The shop is a place apart, a serene refuge from the bustle of the street below—and a glimpse into Bille Brahe’s apparently Zen-like inner mind.
The decision to expand to New York was spurred by the fact that for Bille Brahe, and many other Scandinavian brands, the United States is a fast-growing market. Speed of entry was less important than a smooth landing, however; the designer spent three years looking for just the right space, and then just the right things to put in it. “All the elements that are here are things that I love and things I have in my own life, so it feels personal,” noted the designer. An element of privacy is present, given that it is on the second floor of 1000 Madison. “I had many doubts about whether the shop needed to be on the ground or the second floor,” Billie Brahe said on a walk-through. She opted for the latter based on the belief that it gives the customer “a different feeling of being welcomed into something that feels a private universe more than just a retail store.” Those who have visited the designer’s hometown shop (which is also one floor up) will recognize the new one in New York as its fraternal twin. Pale wooden Dinesen floors were imported from Denmark, as were the display cases and the decorative touches that bring narrative and emotion to the space .There is some of that in the jewelry as well: “There is a blue that I see in the sky in Denmark that I also see in my own jewelry,” the designer said.
Walking into the boutique, guests are welcomed with a display of Danish minimalism. Under a Star-Crown pendant lamp by Poul Henningsen are chairs surrounding a leather covered table by Poul Kjærholm, a cousin to the kind of table “a lot of us grew up with,” said Bille Brahe. Turning left in the horizontal room, there are wood and glass cases by Rune Johansen with lights illuminating SBB best-sellers, like the not-quite-classic tennis necklace with its varied sized diamonds, and the brand’s wildly popular initial rings, which sparkle from the fingers of Copenhagen’s It girls.
The space opens up and widens as one approaches the windows facing Madison Avenue where a small sitting area is arranged around a glass table. Facing the street are Borge Mogensen metal chairs and a settee, all with animal-print upholstery that nods to Peggy Guggenheim, one the designer’s constant muses. The other is Karen Blixen, better known as Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa, who was no stranger to living and breathing lions. Two great felines, carved from stone by Bertel Thorvaldsen, a Danish sculptor who benefited from the patronage of Bille Brahe’s family back in the day, stand at attention. On the table is a glass vase with a shell motif designed by Bille Brahe in Venice (Guggenheim’s chosen home) and a hand mirror from Svenkst Tenn. “I’ve selected each little piece and spent a lot of time trying to find exactly the right ones that I felt represented something that was my history,” she noted.
Sheer dotted curtains filter the light and contribute to a sense of stillness, not unlike that evoked in paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi. The vibe at 1000 Madison is brighter and cleaner, however. Bille Brahe herself operates from a center of calm; the pearl-embellished crocs she wore when we met hint at her sense of fun. After four and a half years of goldsmith training in Denmark, she completed a masters degree at the Royal College of Art and found strength and confidence in her artisanal know-how. “I’ve always been quiet. I’ve always made jewelry, I’ve always used my hands, it’s the way I express myself,” she said. Indeed, her upcoming pearl collection is based on pieces she made when she was 15. “I’ve never been obsessed with trends, for me, [design] is a very inside thing; I feel it like some water running and it just goes through me. And when I need to do a collection, it’s [about] blocking out all the stuff that is around me so I can hear my thoughts.”
Be it education or a new bauble, Bille Brahe likes to start something solid and make it new. “I work from something very, very classic and I try to twist it so it becomes modern and so I want to wear it…. I think by actually knowing…the craft you can create something that has this different elegance,” she said. “And I always try to give the materials a lot of attention…. When I work with diamonds, I feel I’m working with little stars, that’s something very magical for me. Pearls are a little bit the same for me; it’s a very feminine material, very personal…they need to be worn, otherwise they lose their shine.”
There’s no danger of not sparkling in something signed SBB; at the same time the way the designer and her sister-in-law Caroline Bille Brahe wear diamonds and pearls is without preciousness. “For me, it’s also important that jewelry is something you feel quite comfortable wearing,” she said, be that with jeans and a T-shirt or something more head-turning. Bille Brahe sees a connection among “the way I dress and the way I live and the way I wear jewelry…. For me, jewelry just needs to feel personal.”
