Romy Sinclair

"I believe the best way to be eco-conscious about jewelry is to create pieces from components that have already made their impact on the earth."

Romy Sinclair, the designer who helms Romy in the Desert, intends to leave the world a better place for those who come next. She focuses on sustainability, upcycling materials steeped in artistry from past centuries. She extends the concept of legacy and retells the story these pieces have accumulated in their passage through time. She has never stopped finding, wearing, and loving these marvelous bits of history. In the late 1980s, she acquired a large inventory of Gablonz glass beads from 1920s Bohemia that inspired her to craft a collection with a point of view.

In 1989, she showed her necklaces to the jewelry manager at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. The manager instantly loved her work and booked the first of many trunk shows. At that moment, Romy was in love with all things jewelry and focused on creating a business. Romy was initially represented in Los Angeles; she soon expanded her line to New York. Those two showrooms sold her jewelry to major department stores, boutiques, and catalogs across the US. In the late1990s, Romy founded another jewelry company with a focus on spiritual pendants cast in sterling silver and 14K gold. She learned how to build a website and used magazine ads to drive traffic to her online store.

Over the years, Romy has amassed an elegant inventory of English fobs, watch chains, stick pins, and hat pins. Many are hallmarked with the date and place of their origin. She also collects Victorian Whitby jet, hand-carved bog oak, vulcanite, and gutta percha. You will see marvelous examples of old stock gemstones from the 1970s and American Bakelite from the 1930s in her amulets, talismans, and beaded collars. As sustainability gains momentum, Romy has been using these treasures for decades as source materials for her work.