Pronounced gor-y-ana, the approachable jewelry brand just opened its 25th storefront on Newbury street this month—bringing a piece of sunny Laguna Beach to New England’s rigid winters. Here, CEO Jason Griffin Reidel chats about the brand, and how his wife, Gorjana, started creating jewelry. gorjana.com
Tell us more about Gorjana.
I remember when we first started Gorjana…(my wife) had just gotten out of college and I had just graduated law school and we had the entrepreneurial bug. We were newlyweds and we had no idea what we were doing. We were kind of just bouncing around, we didn’t really have jobs. We were doing a little bit of modeling and acting and kind of didn’t know what was going on. As that progressed, it was harder. … She started making jewelry for her friends, we were in our 20s at the time, so she was making jewelry that was at a price point for friends and family. She’d go down to downtown LA and get stuff and so I kind of had the gift for gab so I was like why don’t I just start calling some of these stores. This was in 2004 when the speciality boutique business was booming and so that’s what we did.
Did Gorjana have a background in jewelry prior to starting the brand?
No. You know what’s interesting about that is when we first met, she didn’t wear a lot of jewelry. She took a part time job when we first moved. We were living at Newport Beach at the time, and she took a job for like three months at Neiman Marcus at Fashion Island and this jewelry designer came in and did a trunk show. She was a local Newport Beach, very high end jewelry designer—I’m talking like $4,000, $5,000 statement pieces. She said, “do you want to come work with me part time and help out and do some stuff?” and Gorjana did that for a few months and learned the craft of it. It was hard for us to relate to because she was making necklaces, and this jewelry designer was designing things that were completely out of the stratosphere, we were living like two broke kids. It was so unrelatable to us, but I do think that what is interesting about that is very early on, the idea for Gorjana and her creative genius is that she has the ability to create things and have them look really really nice.
Who is the typical Gorjana client?
That's the interesting thing—it’s so wide. I just had a friend here that lives in Laguna that texted me and he said “you are absolutely nailing it. My wife who’s in her 40s and her friends are all over your product, especially your new fine collection.” My daughter, a 17 year old senior, is about to go to UCLA and play water polo, and her and her friends are all over the product. And my mom who is in her 70s and she’s texting me, because she lives in Walnut Creek, pictures of herself in the Walnut Creek store. So that’s the crazy thing about it. I lost a grandmother earlier this year. It was my last grandmother. She was 96, and she was rocking a Gorjana necklace. You’ve got that and I’ve got my daughter’s soccer team who are all 10 year olds wearing products. We just did a little custom design bracelets for the soccer team with little lightning bolts and they’re in love with it. I was actually at a 40th dinner party for my brother-in-law on Friday and this couple was visiting here, they used to live here but they live in Boston now ironically, and the 8 year old daughter was all over Gorjana, it was crazy. It’s truly super wide and that’s what makes me the most excited when I see that, because there isn’t a typical customer. It’s truly a very wide brand that allows people to interact with it in any way. Some people may go for color and just want to buy things with color, some people might really want to get into the whole meaning of the power gemstone bracelets.
What are you bringing to Boston with the store?
We’re bringing a little piece of Laguna Beach. Having looked at a lot of spaces in Boston, we’re definitely bringing the brightest, most airy kind of store you’re going to see when you go inside. So that right there, aesthetically, is a pretty light beacon.
Do you have any new collections?
There are two things that just came out. We just came out with these amazing (part of our fine jewelry collection) alphabet necklaces. They’re awesome. Each necklace is a letter. They’re $195. Those just came out last week. I love those. And then again back to the soccer, my daughter’s soccer team is a lightning bolt so we just came out with these amazing diamond pove little studs and the lightning bolt ones are my favorite. Those would be my two picks.
Photography by: Courtesy of Gorjana
