It’s not that Dylanlex necklaces are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. On the contrary. Their raw appeal comes from their vintage look. The metalwork is styled like ethnic jewellery crossed with Art Deco and crafted from aged brass, copper, bronze and other mixed metals, which are then hand-laid with Swarovski crystals. It’s not as if they even have colour beyond their metallic sheen. But that’s the whole point. It’s what makes them such a statement. Part biker chic, part classy-on-a-black-cocktail-dress, they are both unconventional and passe-partout.
The brand came about in November 2013 when Drew Ginsburg, a young stylish fashion design student with a love for vintage necklaces, started a blog called MeAndLex. “The Dylanlex aesthetic came from documenting my personal styling,” she says. “I studied fashion design close to home [New York] and also in London, which exposed me more to accessory design,” she continues. “I simply fell in love with embellishment and the ability to accentuate an outfit.”
So via her blog and Instagram account she would style her own outfits with personal pieces of jewellery – mainly vintage rings and necklaces. Often including chest-sized jewellery that she’d wrap around the neck until it became oversized, it was evident that from the very beginning Ginsburg had a unique technique. But as she gained more and more followers, so too did the number of requests to purchase her wares. In the end, she decided to launch her own collection with pieces that ranged from about 500 USD to over a 1,000 USD. She’s never looked back since.
Today, Dylanlex, an amalgamation of Ginsburg’s boyfriend’s name – Dylan, and Lex, the name of her sister and muse, has over 187,000 followers on Instagram alone, as well as a new website where Ginsburg breaks the pieces down to show you how you can stack them in new and stylish ways. Rihanna is a fan of the brand and is often pictured on Dylanlex Instagram’s feed. So too is celebrity stylist Monica Rose, who gave Ginsburg a shout out on her own Instagram account.
Dylanlex designs are radical because they are so dynamic and textured, with a scale that suggests multiple pieces of jewellery and not a single item. Yet, her approach in building such a comfortable and personal relationship with her followers is perhaps the most remarkable thing. You can always find her joking with her fans, like on one recent post of a woman wearing Dylanlex jewellery that was accompanied by the caption: “Not pictured: me making eye contact with her while eating a banana #justkiddingidneverdothat #orwouldi,” followed by emoticons showing her embarrassed and openly laughing.
This is a designer born of the social media age. “It’s because I inadvertently started the company via my social media following”, Ginsburg explains, “the relationship with our customers has always been extremely close as they have literally watched our company grow and evolve day by day. I think there is something really special about watching something come to life in front of your eyes.”
Amazingly, it wasn’t until last September that Dylanlex had more of a physical presence in the world, when a new collection was launched at Owen, the New York concept store located in the fashionable Meatpacking district. Since then, Dylanlex has been added to multibrand stores across the world, including S*uce in Dubai. And though she started with necklaces only, Ginsburg has since incorporated rings, and just this March, she created her first line of bracelets as part of her Spring-Summer 2015 collection.
Despite all this growth, Ginsburg remains modest. “For some reason, my styling also struck a cord with many of our customers”, she continues, “they would email us daily, asking exactly what I was wearing in a certain social media post, which pieces were layered, or what kind of shirt or top I would recommend wearing with a particular piece so we had our web team build the Shop the Instagram feature on the website, which literally tells exactly what's being worn in every post and our customers have been thrilled with it! It's the little things like that that I think make the difference. We truly want to make the experience as easy and wonderful as possible. While we sell luxury products, we try not to have a luxury attitude.”
In many ways Ginsburg is the embodiment of Dylanlex – a young, trendy, funny, edgy, stylish woman who is easy to talk to but not scared to say what she really thinks. “I’m not the girl who wears a cocktail dress to a cocktail party. I’d wear a jacquard suit. I like to show girls that they can wear statement pieces in unconventional ways – it doesn’t have to be so formal.”
