At just 19 years old, East End teenager Jill Lynn Brody had already made a name for herself locally by selling handcrafted beaded jewelry at stores willing to give her a shot.That same summer of 1999, Ms. Brody began attending countless area craft fairs and markets to sell her product. She also began planning the future for her jewelry line, already setting her goal to open a store on the East End.
Fifteen years later, Ms. Brody owns the highly successful Jill Lynn & Co. on Jobs Lane in Southampton Village, where customers will find a sea of bright green walls with colorful gems lining counters and shelves. The boutique sells everything from necklaces and bracelets to custom-designed diamond engagement rings, with about 90 percent of the pieces made by Ms. Brody, and the other 10 percent from other local designers. They have to be one-of-a-kind pieces, and most are made in the store.
“I have loved jewelry for my entire life,” Ms. Brody said last week. “I love to make and sell homemade pieces over mass-produced products—it helps me to keep the quality that I endorse in my store.”
Ms. Brody got her start playing around with glass beads and making pieces for her friends and family. She eventually started approaching East Hampton merchants about selling her pieces, then moved on to the craft fair circuit. In 2005, Ms. Brody took a leap in sharing a Sag Harbor storefront with another designer, but she was always looking for a place of her own. In 2007 she found her chance—a space at 66 Jobs Lane in Southampton. Four years later, she moved to her current location at 81 Jobs Lane, where she creates all of her pieces in the back and sells them in the front.
“The space is fabulous,” she gushed about the store. “When you walk in you fall in love with the whole thing.”
While Ms. Brody fell in love with the art of making jewelry on her own, now she loves helping customers find the right piece for their collection or to give as a gift.
One of her favorites is her “Best Friend” collection, which features a variety of engraved “dog bones” with diamonds or gemstones to fit the owner’s needs. The collection was born in 2002 at the request of a customer, which Ms. Brody says is typically how collections come to be.
For her skull collection, Ms. Brody was inspired by a customer who was looking for something for his daughter. Noticing the skull trend in pop culture, Ms. Brody took the idea and made it pretty with diamonds.
“That was for someone who would typically never wear skulls,” she said. “But I made them pretty and she loved them. It is amazing.”
Other pieces are inspired by Ms. Brody’s own life. Her rose collection is dedicated to her “Nana,” whom she always thinks of when she sees the flowers. She particularly likes the collection because almost everyone she has met has a symbolic attachment to roses, making them popular among customers.
One of Ms. Brody’s signature pieces, however, is the “My First Footprint,” for which she takes a scan of a baby’s footprint and has it engraved into a flat disk. The footprint can be customized with diamonds or gems embossed on the piece, and with names and dates engraved on the back of the disk.
Ms. Brody said her favorite project is custom engagement rings, as there is something special about being involved in such an important part of a couple’s life. In some instances she has even been able to help out with the proposal, which she said is an amazing experience.
“I love that what you find in my store, you won’t find anywhere else, because it is all from the mind of a client or straight from my imagination,” Ms. Brody said.
Erin McKinley on Jul 30, 2014