The Materialist : Deux Amis

Danielle Zdanowski and Devin Zdanowski are husband and wife, business partners, and, before any of that, friends. A year into building a jewelry brand out of their New York apartment, they came on the show to talk about how it started, what they got wrong, and why nobody can predict which piece will sell.At Present Founder Marc Bridge with Deux Amis Founders Danielle Zdanowski and Devin Zdanowski at the Hotel Chelsea, New York City.Deux Amis means “two friends,” and Dani and Devin insist that’s the literal truth of the brand. They are married, they share two goldendoodles and a baby on the way, and they keep going back to Paris so often it’s become a running joke. But underneath all of it, they say, is a friendship. The name, and the collection, came out of those trips: an afternoon at a build-your-own-necklace boutique, a night at the Palais Garnier watching what Parisian women wore to the opera, and then Dani coming home one day with a bag of beads.Neither of them comes from jewelry. Dani runs brand marketing for a footwear company; Devin trained as an engineer. Dani describes the split as roughly 60/40, with her leading design and Devin acting as the checks and balances, the person who tells her how something can actually be made. She admits she doesn’t like hearing no. He admits he’s occasionally the intern, particularly when she tells him a launch can’t move two weeks because of something called the fashion calendar.The first piece was, by their own account, janky: a resin-bead necklace with a little fish charm, the holes drilled by hand, the resin chipping where the drill went in. Dani wore it to the office and spent the next day telling coworkers she’d made it herself. That was the validation. The tassel cord necklace, a black onyx pendant with a silk tassel on a simple cord, was the first thing that sold. The pom-pom necklace, which has been the hero piece since they came to At Present, went through bigger stones, smaller stones, and more than four tassels before it landed where it is now. Devin’s read on it: good form, good function, good balance. Dani’s: just enough, but not too much.We spent a while on materials. Dani only ever wears white, black, or beige, so the collection is built around adding one pop to a minimalist wardrobe without breaking it. That’s how you end up with Dalmatian jasper, a stone defined by its blemishes, sitting next to clean black onyx. Devin points out that no two necklaces are the same anyway. An eight-millimeter bead is never exactly eight millimeters.On price, they were deliberate. Most of the collection lands between roughly $150 and $400, high enough to stay out of fast fashion and low enough to stay out of fine jewelry. Dani’s test is whether she could have afforded it five years ago, and whether someone further along in her career would buy it without a second thought. They rarely see returns, which she takes as a sign the math is working.Asked whether they’ve gotten better at guessing which pieces will sell, both said no. I told them I haven’t either. Devin’s favorite design, the domino earring with jasper and onyx cabochons in a silver bezel, has never taken off. The pom-pom did. That’s the business.The biggest early mistake was thinking they could do everything themselves while holding down two full-time jobs. They’re now hiring their first employee (a family member, which Devin notes keeps it in the family, since family were also the first customers), outsourcing bookkeeping and packaging, and holding the line on one thing: every piece stays handmade and finished by their hands. Growth has been slow by design. Their partners, including At Present and Elyse Walker, all came to them rather than the other way around. They’ve just launched a new collection with grays, a lavender, jade, and jasper, timed to Fashion Week, and are heading into their first real holiday season.Near the end, I asked Dani who the Deux Amis woman is. Her answer was that it isn’t a person so much as a feeling, and then, after some prodding, she landed on Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail and the essence of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: late-’90s New York, elevated but grounded, timeless rather than of the moment. Someone who doesn’t want the internet telling her what to wear.Their pick for a brand deserving more attention: Down The Street, an art curation project run by their friends Jamie and Celia.Shop the Deux Amis collection at At Present, and follow them on Instagram at @deuxamis.co. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit atpresent.substack.com