Inspired by her Mediterranean travels, jewelry designer Melanie Auld designed her new showroom to look like an Italian vacation home.
By Claire Butwinick
Photographed by Janis Nicolay
Next time you’re in Vancouver, enjoy a little slice of Italy at Melanie Auld Jewelry’s flagship boutique.
Opened in June, the showroom uses residential furnishings and imported Italian objets as a reflection of founder Melanie Auld’s European travels as well as her ancestral homeland. “I wanted the boutique to feel more like an oasis in the city than a place to buy,” says Auld, who launched her eponymous jewelry line in 2013.
Brought to life by Vancouver-based interior designer Kelly Deck, the boutique looks more like a Mediterranean vacation home than a standard retail store. The terrazzo entryway—a nod to traditional Italian finishes—is spliced with natural oak flooring, the angular results drawing the eye toward the back of the boutique, where a pair of coral-colored Kelly Wearstler chairs sit. “We played with flooring changes to divide the narrow floor plan and have the entry feel like its own entity,” says Deck. Instead of a formal checkout desk, Deck opted for to create the Jewel Bar, made from dark-green Esmeralda Quartzite, which anchors the boutique and doubles as an ear-piercing station. Built-in arched shelves and wood shadowboxes line the walls, displaying Auld’s demi-fine jewelry, one-of-a-kind Puglia ceramics, and Murano glass pieces, the latter two sourced by Auld on a family trip to Italy.
“I wanted to bring a piece of what I felt in Italy into the store,” she says. “A lot of people connect with Italy because of its comforting food and authenticity, and authenticity is one of our main touchpoints as a brand.”
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