Sandra’s Sources | Hoorsenbuhs

Inside the Hoorsenbuhs atelier in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name: Hoorsenbuhs
File Under: Jewelry Ateliers, Los Angeles
Address: By appointment only
Telephone Number/E-mail: (888) 692-2997 or kether@hoorsenbuhs.com
Web Site: hoorsenbuhs.com

What To Get: Call me narrow-minded, but when I think of jewelry in Los Angeles, I think of red-carpet regulars like Bulgari, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels, and expensive neo-Gothic trinkets from Chrome Hearts. While I have nothing against mega-carat stunners and only mildly disdain overpriced silver bracelets, it’s nice to find a La-La Land jeweler with a cooler, quieter vision. Robert Keith’s chunky but refined gold chains and diamond-paved rings and cuffs have been available at Barneys New York for at least a year, but Cameron Silver (who owns Decades, the amazing Los Angeles vintage boutique) just clued me in to the newly decked-out private atelier for Keith’s line, Hoorsenbuhs. I am told that the company’s bespoke business accounts for 40 percent of sales, and the clients clamoring for these custom baubles aren’t just any old luxury lovers. This being L.A., on any given day, you could be spending your weight in gold alongside (or most likely right before or after) Mary-Kate and Ashley, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Sir Ben Kingsley and Mary J. Blige, to drop a few names.

What I Lust For: I’ll have a sternum-grazing yellow gold version of one of Keith’s signature tri-link chain necklaces, please, and while you’re at it, could you sprinkle it with black diamonds? Add to that two orders of matching yellow gold Phantom cuffs (shown below) and six stackable Phantom Clique rings in white and yellow gold, and I’m set. And probably in debtors’ prison, but never mind.

A Phantom cuff and rings from Hoorsenbuhs.

Atmosphere: The height of industrial chic, California-style. Both the private atelier and Keith’s studio are near the beach (and near-ish Fred Segal) in a 1940s corrugated-iron Quonset hut — a portable, multi-use structure commissioned by the United States Army during World War II.