Alia Mouzannar, Architectural Jewelry Designer

Alia Mouzannar has been with the Aziz and Walid Mouzannar jewelry design house since 2003 when she fully embraced her family’s business and ventured into jewelry design. The Mouzannar family has been among the Middle East’s top jewelry designers since the 18^th century, so Alia had some big shoes to fill. But it quickly became clear that Alia herself is a strong, talented force in jewelry design.

Photo Credit: Aziz and Walid Mouzannar

Alia originally started studying architecture, and her experience in that field certainly has been put to good use. In fact, many of the pieces she has designed bear the clear mark of an architect. Only someone with the type of experience Alia has could come up with these designs as many of them are made in such a way that they can be worn in multiple ways. For example, there are three different ways to wear Alia Mouzannar’s Modular earrings.

Photo Credit: Aziz and Walid Mouzannar

In fact, each piece in the Modular collection can be worn in more than one way, with some even changing shape to create multiple glamorous looks.

Photo Credit: Aziz and Walid Mouzannar

The Cache ring also has some secrets of its own. Alia told The Telegraph that she came up with the idea for the ring when trying to figure out how to wear a 1960s ring her mother-in-law gave her when she got married. The vintage ring didn’t really fit her style, so she didn’t wear it often. But one day, using some of her children’s clay, she molded around some parts of the ring and got the idea to create shells to cover different parts of the stone so that women can wear the same ring but in different ways.

But what’s incredible about Alia Mouzannar’s designs doesn’t stop at the intricate mechanisms she creates to make it possible to wear her pieces different ways. The Lebanese designer is also inspired by contemporary art, and the Aziz and Walid Mouzzannar website describes her pieces as coming from “an exceptional sense of proportion, harmony, poetry, humor and a free spirit.”

Photo Credit: Aziz and Walid Mouzannar

Alia Mouzannar has won many honors and awards over the course of her career as a jewelry designer, including the HRD contest’s SDE Award in Shanghai in 2011. In 2013, she was selected as one of the top 30 finalists for her SHY_NING necklace in the 2013 HRD Diamond and Jewelry Awards.

Photo Credit: Aziz and Walid Mouzannar