Thirty years at the bench, and what they prove

A jewelry brand lasts 30 years when the designer still shapes the work, the metal is solid and repairable, the line can change without losing its hand, and people keep wearing it. Ilene Joy was founded in 1996, relaunched with Rae Scheer in 2019, and is still made by hand at a bench in Los Angeles.

Time is not the test

Plenty of houses are old and tired. A date on the door tells you a business has survived; it does not tell you whether the jewelry is any good, or whether anyone there still cares how it is made. So we would rather give you things you can check than a number to admire. There are six of them, and we have held ourselves to each.

The name on the door

Houses change hands. The name stays, the hand goes. The test is simple to ask and harder to answer: who decides what is made now?

Ours is still Ilene. She works alongside her master jeweler and a small team of artisans, as our About page describes, and since 2019 she has run the Atelier with her daughter, Rae Scheer, whom WWD described as her business partner. The longer account is in who is Ilene Joy.

Metal that can be mended

Solid gold can be resized, polished, re-set and repaired. Plated metal wears through, and once it does there is little a jeweler can do. If you want a piece to be worn for decades, buy metal that can be worked on. Every piece we make is solid 14K or 18K gold, and we set out the differences between the options in solid gold vs vermeil vs gold-filled vs plated.

A bench that repairs matters as much as the metal. Our aftercare page says the atelier stands behind every piece we make: you email photographs and your order number to begin a repair or warranty review. It also says plainly what is not covered, such as damage from normal wear, accidents, loss and chain breakage from pulling.

Room to change

A house that never changes goes out of date. One that changes everything loses the people who loved it. The trick is to move without dropping the thread.

In 2019, Ilene described her early work to WWD as heavily beaded, and the new line as "really wearable and layerable." WWD called the relaunch, held in New York in February that year and covered by Vogue, the "2.0 version of her original brand". In 2021 came a second collection, made with the stylist Elizabeth Sulcer. Today the focus is charms and chains you design yourself, with an on-model view to guide you.

People who keep coming back

Demand is the hardest sign to fake and the easiest to overstate. What we can point to is what others have written. In 2021, Grazia called Ilene Joy "a cult favorite among many A-listers." The PR Net described the Atelier as having a "second act." Both are linked in our press roundup, and the names reported in the coverage are on who wears Ilene Joy.

A record you can open

The fifth sign is a public record: press you can open, with a date on it. Ours runs from the founding in 1996, through the last three seasons of Sex and the City, which WWD reported Ilene was signed to do, to the relaunch party in New York on 5 February 2019 and the collection with Sulcer on 30 November 2021.

Someone who answers

The last sign is the smallest. Write to a house that intends to last and a person writes back. Our atelier typically replies within one business day.

What 30 years does not prove

It does not prove the piece in front of you is good. Judge that on the metal, the setting and the finish. It does not prove the terms suit you either, so read the return policy. A longer record simply gives you more to check, which is the point.

To check any house's age, find the founding year in at least two places, open the press and look at the dates, look for a stockist with a street address, and ask what changed between the founding and now. More of these questions are in how to choose a fine jewelry brand in America.

Ilene Joy was founded in 1996 and relaunched in 2019 by Ilene and her daughter, Rae Scheer. Every piece is made to order in solid 14K or 18K gold at our Los Angeles bench.