Suzanna Dai

One look at the Suzanna Dai designer jewelry website and I like Suzie Gallahue already: She's a jewelry designer extraordinaire, but she thinks like a writer. This jewelry collection is about content. About discovering what mood you're in and putting it around your wrist, and on your neck… Or better yet, being transported to another time and place on the wings of an exotic Thai beetle. (Gallahue uses these to craft her Suzanna Dai - Amazonia Collection.)

The NYC-based designer's use of beads and appliqués on fabric, cording and metal threads, ribbon, silver, 14K gold-plating, tulle wrapping, rhinestones, semi-precious stones, and exotic materials, like peacock feathers, is about creating various stylistic vibes - Medieval, Deco, or Vintage. Usually these highly intricate, big, and fabric-enclosed pieces become more important to the ensemble than whatever else the lucky wearer has on. This is a designer jewelry line for confident women.

Suzie Gallahue

But even more than making a fashion statement, the Suzanna Dai designer jewelry line is about adventure and nostalgia: old world travel. Using quotations on her website and uncanny insight in her design, Gallahue evokes a time when traveling was something you were doing, and going to be doing for a while, getting a taste for the local flavor, collecting some pieces of the place, before crossing the ocean again.  

Suzanna names her hand-crafted designer jewelry, Suzanna Dai Collections, after cities - Monte Carlo, Tokyo, Rome, St. Petersburg, to name a few – where an ensemble (necklace / earrings / bracelet) will embody the spirit of the place. Monte Carlo, then, evokes the Grace Kelly-era with vintage silver and rhinestone flowers. Rome features intricately beaded appliqués and turquoise, suggesting the ancient nature of the city, while Tokyo is quirky and modern, using chaotic chains, fabric and large onyx stones.

Suzanna Dai St. Petersburg Necklace

St. Petersburg features deep black jet stones set in black tulle, held together on black fabric with very intricate black-corded stitching. (This piece was worn by Leighton Meester's character, Blair, on the hit TV show, Gossip Girl.) My personal favorite Suzanna Dai piece, Antwerp, is an extremely intricate multi-chained and gold-silver-beaded medallion confection, also featured on the same show. The Suzanna Dai line has also been discovered by magazines such as People, Conde Nast Traveler, and In Style.

With Gallahue's to Dai for designer jewelry collections, exotic travel has never been more glamorous - or more local. Name your destination, name your story…and then wear it.

The Suzanna Dai brand was introduced to the staff of GalleryAtlantic.com in a recent interview with Yuli Ziv - Thanks Yuli.  The pictures in this post were taken from the Suzanna Dai website.