Growing Her Bling Empire

Jewellery entrepreneur and former radio personality Maddy Barber is taking her colourful bespoke brand overseas.

- LYNETTE KOH

Featuring elaborate and often whimsical design elements — along with highly sought-after coloured gemstones such as emeralds, Paraiba tourmalines, and cobalt blue spinels — the priciest pieces that local bespoke jeweller Madly Gems has created for its top clients can bear six-digit price tags. But it is not these extravagant designs that come to the mind of the brand’s founder, former radio DJ Maddy Barber, when asked about her company’s most memorable creations.

Instead, what stands out for the entrepreneur is the emotional reactions of her clients, the prices of their pieces notwithstanding. Petite with an outsized presence, Barber is dressed in a resort-ready palette of turquoise and green on the day of our interview.

Barber recalls a customer who came in with a sapphire ring she inherited from her late mother. The client wanted the sapphire, symbolising her mother, reset into a new ring, along with another Madly gemstone to represent herself.

Barber recalls, “When she unwrapped her new ring, she just cried because she felt so close to her mum. All of us also had tears in our eyes.” For the jeweller, it is this emotional connection that gives Madly Gems’ creations meaning. She shares, “Whether a design is simple, classic, or complex, what we hear over and over again from our clients is, ‘This is me!’ To me, that is what bespoke is.”

A DISRUPTIVE APPROACH