10 years of Rare Jewelry: A decade of maximalist designs made for everyday wear

You won’t catch Dannie Larsson without her diamonds. “You can never tell me not to wear jewellery,” she says, holding out an arm so her eclectic stack of encrusted chains and tennis bracelets can reflect the late afternoon light. “It doesn’t matter where we are, I need my jewellery.” At the gym, perusing the aisles at ICA, swimming in the ocean on vacation – for Larsson, all occasions call for a total jewellery look.

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Today the bracelets are joined by a pair of chunky hoop earrings set with brilliant cut diamonds around their perimeter (the insides of the hoops boast pink sapphires). The icing on the cake? A teddy bear pendant, covered head to fuzzy foot in more diamonds (its eyes are also gleaming pink sapphires, to match the earrings, natch), dangling from her neck. “He’s holding a bottle of Champagne,” says Larsson, holding up the bear so I can get a closer look. Indeed, in its hand is a teeny tiny rose gold bottle. “It’s cute, right?”

It’s sort of Larsson’s job to look this fabulous all the time. The founder of fine jewellery brand Rare Jewelry, she designed every last piece she’s wearing, down to the tiniest stone. “I draw everything by hand,” says Larsson (by left hand, to be more specific). “I used to do it on paper – that’s a nice feeling – but I switched to iPad. Sometimes the client wants to change the colour of the stone and if I draw on paper, I have to put in another three days to change it.”

We’re sitting at a glossy round dining table in the second-floor kitchen in Larsson’s elegant two-floor Stockholm penthouse. With massive glass doors giving way to twin balconies on either side of the space, it’s the room in the flat that gets the most natural light and, therefore, the room best suited to looking at gemstones.

Larsson slides me a little black box with a sizable amethyst nestled in its centre. “This looks like a normal cushion cut, but I added 10 extra facets,” she says. “It makes it sparkle like a diamond.” It’s this willingness to go “one extra step” to make a piece of jewellery truly unique that has made Rare Jewelry, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, a cult favourite amongst a certain set of discerning mostly-Swedish women. “A lot of people can design jewellery – it’s not difficult,” says Larsson. “But to think one step ahead, that’s what makes Rare what it is today.”

She didn’t come up with the notion of more facets (though she has given her signature approach a name: “Rare cut”). However, in order to execute this precise technique, one has to have the right stones. “If I’m going to make a Rare cut, the stone cannot have any inclusions, because then it’s going to break” she says. “So you have to find the perfect stone. And in Sweden, others don’t do that.”

Luckily, Larsson has a great ‘stone guy’ – a supplier who travels the world, finding the sort of awe-inspiring rarities that give way to her most jaw-dropping creations. “For instance, we found this amazing emerald and it was… it was…” Larsson pauses before dropping her voice to a whisper and saying, “Big.” 3.1 carats, to be exact. She knew immediately she couldn’t just whip up a “normal pendant with diamonds around it”. So instead she designed an intricate dragon and placed the massive stone – after giving it a Rare cut, of course – in its jaws. The piece was for a Swedish client, who purchased an emerald insect pin to match. “She wears it all the time,” says Larsson. In addition to these other worldly one-offs, Rare also offers tightly-edited collections of pieces made in teeny tiny batches (sometimes just one-to-three pieces of each design, sometimes a few more).

Speaking with Larsson it’s hard to imagine her doing anything other than designing the sort of jewellery that most women don’t even dare to fantasise about. But before she founded Rare, she was on another track entirely. Living abroad in Paris, she studied economics, destined to work in finance, which she ultimately did (for a little while, anyway). “I tried to work in a bank,” she says. "It was so boring.” Whilst in school, she took an art history elective, which deepened her appreciation for the aesthetic. A lingering interest in “all things design” took root: “Furniture, food, wallpaper – not specifically jewellery,” she says.

She moved back to Sweden intent on not working at a bank but not entirely sure what was next. As her first toe-dip into something more creative, Larsson took an advertising job (“It was a lot of fun”) through which she met her husband, Olof Larsson, who owns the luxury watch boutique Nymans. Originally purchased by Olof’s father in 1968, the shop is Stockholm’s only official Rolex retailer (Dannie, meanwhile, “loves watches”; her current favourite is the Rolex Day-Date 36 Rosegold). In observing her husband’s business, she discovered something about the Swedish jewellery offering: everything sort of looked the same. A seed was planted and she began drawing. Two years later she launched Rare with her first signature: the Pax bangle.

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Still available in the Rare repertoire a decade later (though updated a bit over the years), the Pax series literally turns a diamond on its head. “It’s inspired by the pyramid at the Louvre,” says Larsson, noting she’s been there dozens of times, both privately and as an art history student. The bracelet is defined by its upside-down Princess cut diamonds, creating small spike-like pyramids. “It’s edgy, but at the same time elegant,” says Larsson. Immediately there was a customer; a Swedish woman looking for something decadent and different.

There’s something else that defines Rare. Just as Larsson’s own approach to wearing her creations suggests, these are not special occasion pieces. “From the beginning, I wanted to create jewellery for people in Scandinavia to wear every day – even if it’s diamonds,” she says, noting that a decade ago, this was quite an unusual proposition. Larsson designs with this in mind, ensuring the pieces are both comfortable and able to withstand daily life. This is best embodied by her popular stretch series. Placed on a stretchable titanium coil, the bracelets, rings and chokers simply slide on and off (titanium, she explains, is the ideal material for the job as it won’t lose its shape over time).

As magic hour light sweeps through Larsson’s apartment, I follow her down the twisted stairway into the living room- slash-home office. Here, we’re greeted by two vitrines showcasing three collections: the chunky-chain Curb collection, the aforementioned stretchable Pax pieces and the brand new Cora collection. She switches the jewellery out regularly, also changing up the photos that flank the entrance (today there are images of couture collector Fredrik Robertsson flipping the bird in a colourful rainbow-stoned Rare ring). On the adjacent wall, a family portrait: Larsson, her husband and their 16-year-old son, Leonard, who has already gotten into the family business, on the watch side (“He’s joining for all the education at Rolex and Tudor and he works in the store on Saturdays”). Their daughter, Juliette, is a ballerina.

Larsson casually removes a couple of stretch diamond bracelets from the vitrine and slips them on my wrist. She’s right – they are comfortable. And almost impossibly dazzling. I could get used to wearing them every day, given the chance.

Though Rare, with its unapologetic more-is-more mentality, may not always look especially Scandinavian, its underlying practicality is deeply Swedish. And it resonates. In its 10 years in business, the brand has found its clientele of everyday diamond enthusiasts, including Vogue Scandinavia Editor in Chief Martina Bonnier (who has co-designed a capsule with Rare featuring show-stopping cocktail rings covered in vibrant gemstones) and actor Lena Olin, who collaborated with Rare on a Hilma af Klint-inspired collection tied to her film Hilma. Swedish actor Malin Åkerman, meanwhile, wore a custom lock and key necklace by Rare whilst playing Margo Banks in her hit show The Hunting Wives (the moment sparked an increase in interest in Rare from abroad). Who has been the most pinch-me client so far? “Oh there have been a few,” says Larsson with a smile. “The Princess maybe?” When I ask her “ which one” she responds: “All of them.”