FoundRae’s Beth Hutchens, a Downtown Girl to the Core, Has Opened an Uptown Outpost for Her Collectible Jewelry

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“It’s funny—it actually did feel like I was voyaging to a new city,” Beth Hutchens, founder of the cult fine jewelry brand FoundRae confesses, when she is asked about her forays to the Upper East Side, expeditions that led her to open a new shop in the wilds of Madison Avenue. Hutchens is, after all, a quintessential downtown girl. Today she is wearing a t-shirt that she has eviscerated with scissors and that flaunts smiling ketchup and mustard bottles, not exactly the garb you would expect on an Upper East Side doyenne. For the past nine years she has been the proprietor of a gorgeous store on Lispenard Street in Tribeca, a destination for travelers who venture below Canal Street in search of the collectible FoundRae jewelry that is meant to express their unique personalities.

But when her daughter began attending school uptown, and Hutchens got to know the neighborhood a little bit, she realized that there were in fact, uncounted women—and men—who were not yet members of the extended FoundRae family. “We all have egos,” she admits. “I thought everyone comes downtown—and then all of a sudden I realized, well, a lot of people don’t. There’s a whole other world up here that really has a lot of creativity and an interest in art and craftsmanship.”

Inside the new Madison Avenue space, where Hutchens looks forward to getting to know the community.

Hutchens is a firm believer in the universality of her design aesthetic. Her pieces are imbued with highly individual symbols, tenets, affirmations, and paeans to what she calls “our oneness.” In the last year, she has recently opened in Los Angeles at 8405 Melrose Place, with Miami in the headlights, and now this Manhattan undertaking. She has no plans to be an absentee owner—her rather ambitious goal is to visit these places at least once a month. “I like to get to know the community,” she says. (This will be far easier when the store is a quick subway ride—take the 6 train—or an Uber to Madison.)

Once the decision was made, not just any real estate would do. “As soon as I saw the space, I had a feeling I would want it, and not just because the address is 777 Madison. It’s much smaller than the other store. And I knew I want it to be red, all red—the entire store, the floor, the ceiling, the walls—but its cinnabar, a soft red, like cinnabar ink!”

A Discovery Drawer, with pieces no one has seen before.

Artist

This cinnabar mini-palace may be relatively diminutive, but it is big enough to accommodate an on-site bench jeweler and a hand engraver. Because you might want to move your charms around—adding or subtracting as you achieve various milestones—and you might just want something engraved with a message so personal it only has meaning for you. “People create their own pieces,” Hutchens says, describing the essence of her brand. “You’re never going to see your necklace on anyone else, you could be in a room full of people wearing FoundRae and they will each maintain their individuality.”

Does she expect customers in different cities to have different tastes? Well, maybe. Just for fun, she is installing what she calls Discovery Drawers in her various locations, with pieces no one has seen before. “They haven’t been photographed, and they’re not on our website—it’s an excuse for me to fool around and dig in!” And—spoiler alert—for the new Madison shop, she might just sequester an extremely large malachite and gold four leaf clover. “It’s bigger than anything I’ve done before. I love it! It’s not everyone who wants to invest in something that’s kind of casual but that you can’t wear every day. But now with the Discovery Drawer, I can reach the one or two people on Madison who will think this is the best piece they’ve ever seen in their lives.”

And should the excitement of the Discover Drawer prove too much, you can always stroll down to the Viand Coffee Shop and consider your options over a cup of diner coffee. “Or you could also have brunch at the Carlisle,” Hutchens laughs, and suddenly you see that the joy of being in two places at once. The gritty glamour of Lispenard Street and the tony ambience of Madison are both happy homes for the world of FoundRae.

The new FoundRae store is located at 777 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10065.

This cinnabar mini-palace accommodates an on-site bench jeweler and a hand engraver.