David Yurman Brings Men’s Jewelry to SoHo

Your girlfriend’s favorite jeweler wants to hang out downtown.

David Yurman likes Soho, but that’s not news. No one is walking around talking trash about beautiful women, start-up offices, and cast iron architecture. What’s worth taking a moment to note is that David Yurman has opened a new 2000-square-foot boutique in Soho and that his trademark cocktail bracelets and cable pave charm bracelets aren’t the centerpiece. There are some potential presents for your girlfriend, sure, but it feels like a men’s store – a place for dudes to shop for dude jewelry.

The boutique is not the first jewelry story in New York to go after the male market, but its opening does mark the one of the first time that a major brand went all brick and mortar about it. With the male jewelry market set to explode – the 

men’s accessories market grew 9%

 between May, 2013 and May, 2014 – it all makes sense. But it’s still a bold move, the sort of statement piece that one associates with recently engaged women who got pretty after high school. You’re supposed to look twice; it’s super shiny.

The store sits behind a Richard Haas mural in an old loft building that has the sort of we’ve-got-money-and-taste-at-the-same-time vibe that brands look for downtown. It’s big, with a lot of wood and metal details. Paintings by Yurman’s wife, Sybil, hang on the walls; sculptures by his son, Evan, sit in the Noumenon section, a sort of gallery/oasis within the store. It’s bold, albeit contemplative, stuff – in keeping with the brand’s move toward simpler, punchier designs. It’s a hell of a place to buy a carbon ring. 

Not into rings? Yurman is betting that you will be. We’re betting he’s right.