Why the world's fashion capital taught me more about architecture than style
By Kirsten Dexter
I didn't go to Milan to find jewelry inspiration. I went for a wedding — my daughter's.
She was getting married on Lake Como, and we'd flown in a few days early. Milan was supposed to be a layover. Instead, it became one of the most important cities in my design life.
That first morning, the feeling of the place stopped me. Milan is a city of contradictions that somehow make perfect sense. Narrow cobblestone lanes open onto grand piazzas. Faded ochre buildings with centuries-old shutters stand shoulder to shoulder with sleek contemporary storefronts. It's quaint and impossibly high-style at the same time — and that combination got under my skin immediately.
I spent the day doing what I always do in a city that moves me: I took hundreds of photographs. Not the tourist shots, but the close-ups — ironwork, stone carvings, the details most people walk right past. My design process doesn't happen on the spot. I photograph obsessively, then spread the images across my desk back home and start sketching. The photos capture what caught my eye. The sketches find what it means.
The Duomo: A Cathedral That Thinks Like a Jeweler
The morning before we drove to Lake Como, I told my family I needed one hour at the Duomo. I came back three hours later.
Up on the terraces, I found myself face-to-face with stone tracery so intricate it could have been filigree. Gothic pinnacles no wider than my hand, carved with a precision that would challenge any modern jeweler. Marble lace that had survived five centuries of rain and still looked delicate enough to break.
Weeks later, back home in Charlotte, I printed those photographs and pinned them across my studio wall. The Duomo's tracery simplified itself on paper — the essential geometry emerged, the curves found their rhythm. Those sketches became my Milan pendant. I wanted to capture what the Duomo's master builders understood: that the most powerful design reveals itself slowly, detail by detail, the longer you look.
If you go: Book the terraces ticket and go early on a weekday. Bring a good camera — you'll want macro shots, not wide angles. The magic is in the close-ups.
The Galleria: Where Milan Showed Me Who It Really Is
If there's one building that captures Milan's particular magic, it's the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Built in the 1860s, it's one of the world's oldest shopping arcades — a 160-year-old building intimate enough to feel like a neighborhood gathering place, housing Prada and Louis Vuitton beneath a ceiling that belongs in a cathedral. Quaint and high-style. That tension I'd been feeling since I arrived, right there in architectural form.
What I photographed most wasn't the grand dome — it was the metalwork. The iron framework isn't just structural; it's ornamental art at extraordinary scale. Arched ribs, decorative brackets, wrought iron meeting glass in elegant curves. The same language as fine jewelry, written larger. And the building itself outshines everything inside it. There's a lesson in that: the setting matters as much as what it holds.
If you go: Look at the iron details at eye level, not just the dome. Then look down — the geometric border patterns on the mosaic floors are what caught my jeweler's eye.
The Hidden Courtyards: My Favorite Milan
After the wedding — the most beautiful day — we had a few more days in the region. While the family lingered by the lake, I kept finding my way back to Milan.
I wandered the Navigli canals and studied the Romanesque carvings at Sant'Ambrogio. But the neighborhood that truly captured me was the Brera.
The Brera doesn't feel like Milan — or rather, it feels like the Milan that existed before the fashion houses arrived. Cobblestone streets barely wide enough for two people. Art galleries tucked into ground-floor studios with paint-spattered doors propped open. Small restaurants where the menu is whatever the owner decided to cook that morning. The Pinacoteca di Brera — one of Italy's great museums — anchors the neighborhood, but it's the streets around it that held me. Every block felt curated without trying, the kind of effortless beauty that takes centuries to accumulate. I could have spent the entire trip in the Brera alone.
And it was here that I stumbled onto my favorite discovery — the thing I still think about when someone asks what I love most about Milan — the hidden alleys and courtyards.
Milan doesn't give itself away from the street. You walk past a nondescript doorway, and if you're not paying attention, you'll never know what's behind it. But step through, and suddenly you're standing in a secret courtyard — stone columns draped in climbing roses, a mosaic floor no one has roped off, an iron staircase spiraling up to apartments with shutters thrown open to the afternoon light.
Some were grand, with carved fountains and frescoed walls open to the sky. Others were intimate — a tiny garden with a wrought-iron bench and a lemon tree. But they all shared the same quality: Milan's real beauty isn't on display. It's tucked away, waiting for someone curious enough to push through an unmarked door.
That idea shaped my design thinking more than any single building. The best jewelry works the same way — it doesn't announce itself from across the room. It draws you in. You notice the shape first, then look closer and find the detail within the detail. Milan's courtyards taught me that the most luxurious thing a design can offer isn't sparkle. It's discovery.
If you go: Start with the courtyards along Via Fiori Chiari and Via Madonnina in Brera. Near the Università degli Studi di Milano on Via Festa del Perdono, the Renaissance-era courtyards are breathtaking. The rule is simple: if you see an open doorway, look inside. Milan rewards the curious.
What I Brought Home
I went to Milan for my daughter's wedding and came home with a new collection forming in my mind. That's how it always happens — the best designs come from the cities that catch me off guard.
My Milan pendant distills all of it — the Gothic tracery of the Duomo, the elegant geometry of the Galleria, the warmth of those hidden courtyards — into a single piece of 14-karat gold. It's the kind of jewelry that makes someone lean in and ask, "Where did you get that?" And suddenly you're telling them about the morning you spent on the roof of a six-hundred-year-old cathedral while your daughter was about to get married on the most beautiful lake in the world.
That's what I make jewelry for. Not just to be beautiful, but to carry a story.
Explore the full European Collection and find the piece that tells your story. Handcrafted in 14-karat gold and sterling silver, with complimentary U.S. shipping.
Your Milan Itinerary: A Design Lover's Weekend
Day One: Duomo terraces at opening, lunch at Spontini, afternoon in the Galleria, aperitivo at Bar Basso in Brera.
Day Two: Courtyard hunting in Brera — wander Via Fiori Chiari, ducking into every open doorway. Canal-side lunch in the Navigli. Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio. Dinner at Trattoria Milanese for risotto alla Milanese.
Continuing to Lake Como? The drive is about an hour and worth every minute. And yes, I photographed every iron gate and stone balustrade along the way.