For over 40 years, the David Yurman brand has been synonymous with sculptural elegance and an iconic cable design that is recognized from Madison Avenue to Tokyo. But beneath the polish is the story of a family that turned creativity into a calling—and a business built on passion rather than pressure.
Trained as a sculptor, David Yurman learned to bend metal into form from renowned artists like Ernesto Gonzalez and Jacques Lipchitz. He spent the 1960s learning “artistic discipline, a clear sense of purpose, and mastery of materials.”
His wife, Sybil, a painter who once lived among the Beat poets of San Francisco, shared his conviction that art should be lived with, not locked away. Together, they turned their downtown loft into both home and workshop, selling pieces at craft fairs.
“We were artists first,” Yurman recalls. “We didn’t have a corporation behind us, no luxury house running our business. We did it as two artists.”
That spirit of self-reliance goes back to his teenage years mowing lawns in New Hyde Park to support his family. “I had four or five guys mowing lawns for me,” he laughs. “It taught me how to build something, how to deal with people. I guess I was an entrepreneur before I knew the word.”
Family remains the company’s heartbeat. Sybil still helps shape its creative direction, and their son Evan, now President and Chief Creative Officer, has pushed the brand into new territory.
“I started the men’s business,” Yurman says. “Got it up to about $67 million and said, okay, I’ve done it. Evan came in and took it to over $200 million.” Evan built his own design team and infused the line with a rebellious energy—motorcycles, knives, and edge. “These guys are the last ones to leave the studio,” Yurman says proudly. “They love what they do.”
While most luxury houses have been absorbed into global conglomerates, David Yurman remains family-owned. “We’ve said no to a lot of people who wanted to buy the company,” he admits. “This is our house. We built it, and it’s comfortable.”
That independence allows for creative freedom—and occasional family tension. “We have enough internal pressure,” he laughs. “Sybil, myself, and Evan—we all think we know what’s best. We just have to come to a consensus.”
For Yurman, the importance of family extends into their customer base. “We sell to families,” he says. “A mother, a daughter, a father—they come in together to buy a piece for a graduation or milestone. As a family-owned business, we design for families.”
Many of those clients become collectors, building small personal museums of Yurman pieces. “Fifty-plus% of our business is repeat customers,” he notes. “They buy, they come back. It’s generational.”
Success, he believes, brings responsibility. “We’ve donated millions of dollars’ worth of stones to jewelry schools,” he says. “We run competitions, we mentor students. We even created an award for entrepreneurs—because I know how tough those first years are.”
The company also supports sustainability and fair sourcing, though Yurman is candid about the complexities. “You can’t buy enough sustainable gold to run a business,” he says. “But we’re conscious, we support transparency, and we keep pushing the industry forward.”
He’s also pragmatic about margins and growth. The recent expansion of their retail boutiques was championed by Evan, who developed a plan to grow the company’s physical footprint. “Cash flow used to be slow—you ship, you wait. In our stores, you sell it, you get paid that day. Suddenly, I thought, ‘What do we do with all this money?’ Build more stores!”
Now in his seventies, Yurman is as restless as ever—sketching, sculpting, experimenting with new materials and innovative technologies. “We’re using new tools—3-D scanning, additive manufacturing—but it’s still about the hand,” reiterating that innovation serves the artist, not the other way around. “Art transcends time. When you walk into a museum and see prehistoric cave paintings, that’s as expressive as anything today. That’s what we’re chasing—timelessness.”
Like the cable itself—twisted yet balanced, strong yet refined—the David Yurman story is a study in tension: between art and commerce, old and new, individuality and family. That balance, maintained for more than four decades, may be the most timeless design of all.
