Breaking the Mold

Before she could create her line of jewelry, designer Taylor Saleem had to forge a new path.

- AMANDA WOYTUS

TAYLOR SALEEM CASTS delicate dogwood blossoms in silver. She saws away at thin sheets of metal, conjuring the forms of birds and botanicals. She strings beads and sets turquoise. Each piece she makes reveals an aspect of her story.

Saleem, who is from Alton, is the owner of Taylor Saleem Jewelry. She grew up in a bi-racial family with a Black father and a white mother. “I [used to] code-switch—I could fit in with this group or that group,” she says of her childhood. “I didn’t recognize that there was anything unique about me and my racial background until college.”

But as a student at Saint Louis University in the early aughts, where she didn’t see many people who looked like her, Saleem experienced an identity crisis: “I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere in the world.”