Caroline Hadida

She is the founder of Maison Marcelle– a jewelry house named after her grandmother, the woman who raised her. Caroline initially worked as a fashion designer. One day, she left the world of fashion – characterized by seasons and transience – behind and turned to fine jewelry. To what endures.

Interview

1. Do you remember the moment you decided to switch from fashion to jewelry?

There wasn't a single moment. It happened slowly – almost without me consciously making a decision.

For many years, I worked with clothes: with fabrics, volume, and how a silhouette is created. At some point, I started looking at jewelry differently – not as an accessory, but as an independent object. As a small piece of architecture worn on the body.

What fascinated me was the material. To create something lasting from a raw metal that doesn't age like a piece of clothing. And the freedom it offers: In jewelry, I can go much further with volume, proportions, and mobility. A few millimeters change everything. In this, I found my own design language.

2. Each of your pieces of jewelry is made from 18-karat gold, and you place great importance on the highest level of craftsmanship. Who manufactures your jewelry?

Manufacturing is not a step that only begins after the drawing. It is part of the creative process.

I mainly work with ateliers in Paris – with artisans with whom I am in constant exchange. The finishing and stone setting are done in-house. During development, I am closely involved at every step: We create prototypes, change heights, joints, or proportions – sometimes by only a few millimeters. Some designs I have reworked five or six times until their movement felt exactly as I had envisioned it.

We work exclusively with 18-karat yellow gold. The diamonds are selected in D–F and VS qualities. These characteristics are not immediately apparent – but they determine how a stone catches and reflects light.

And I do not strive for lightness. This is a conscious decision – and a risk I deliberately take. Gold has never been as precious as it is today, and the market's response is almost always: reduce volume, optimize weight, and create the impression of material without actually using material.

I go the opposite way. I work with generous volumes and an exceptionally high amount of gold. This decision has its price – and Maison Marcelle consciously bears it. Because a piece of jewelry with real substance behaves differently than one that has been optimized for maximum weight savings: It rests quietly on the wrist, maintains its shape, and does not rattle. You can feel its quality the moment you pick it up – even before you put it on.
That's exactly what you should recognize first in a piece of Maison Marcelle jewelry.

3. How would you describe your collections – and what makes them unique?

In my work, there is always a tension between structure and movement.

I start with a very simple element and repeat it – but never in a regular sequence. I work with different heights, rhythms, and the interplay of mass and emptiness. It is precisely this slightly shifted repetition that transforms a strict geometry into an organic, almost living form.

I want to create jewelry with a real presence. Jewelry with a lot of gold and real volume, yet remaining feminine and wearable every day. Most women who come to me already own jewelry from major houses – and they wear it with ease. They are not looking for another variant of what they already know. They are looking for something that no one else wears. Something they discovered themselves and that appears even more fascinating up close than from a distance.

Then the light does the rest – and light plays a central role in my design process. I design the volumes so that they cast shadows on each other and the jewelry changes with every movement of the wrist.

The diamond is never spread over the entire surface. It is located at a single, very deliberately chosen point – exactly where the eye finally rests and the light hits it. Sometimes you don't immediately perceive it. It deepens a shadow or catches a reflection of light without ever occupying the entire space. At Maison Marcelle “the diamond never shouts.”

4. Your jewelry house is named after your grandmother, and you are a mother of six children. What does passing on mean to you?

Marcelle was my grandmother. She raised me. As a child, I wore her jewelry without thinking about whether it was beautiful. I wore it because it belonged to her and still carried something of her within it.

That is the origin of Maison Marcelle. Dedicating the name of the house to her was not a nostalgic gesture. I wanted to create something completely contemporary from this story.

A piece of jewelry belongs to one era and yet continues to live in another. It is worn, acquires traces of life, accompanies its wearer for many years, and eventually passes into new hands. That is why every piece of jewelry leaves our house with an accompanying booklet that continues its journey with it and documents its history over time.

I imagine that one day my daughters will wear some of my jewelry – in their own way. That is what heritage means to me: to receive something and then make it your own.

5. Which piece of jewelry do you wear most often yourself?

Without hesitation: my Équation bracelet.
It is the piece of jewelry that best embodies Maison Marcelle. Thirty-five movable elements, built on the repetition of a single motif, whose different heights create movement. Thirty-seven grams of gold on the wrist. The mechanism is design-protected – a piece of jewelry that is as challenging to manufacture as it is difficult to copy.

Viewed flat, it appears almost architectural. On the wrist, however, it becomes soft and supple, follows every movement, and behaves almost like a fabric. I often wear several of them stacked. Depending on how they lie against each other, the entire appearance changes.

Lots of material, lots of presence – and yet I wear it every day.
That's exactly what I want to achieve with Maison Marcelle.