Meet Maŕa Peralta Studio
Maŕa Peralta sees herself as “a designer working through jewelry as a deeply personal language of identity, rebellion, and resilience.” For her, “Jewelry becomes a form of self-expression that is not decorative, but declarative, a uniform, a ritual object, a symbol of presence.”
We spoke with the Brooklyn based jewelry designer, Maŕa Peralta , and uncovered what makes Maŕa Peralta Studio what it is today.
LAGREV: "Who is Maŕa Peralta as a designer today, and how do ideas of
identity, rebellion, and resilience
shape the way you approach jewelry as a form of self-expression?"
Maŕa: "Today, I see myself as a designer working through jewelry as a deeply personal language of identity, rebellion, and resilience. Maŕa Peralta Studio was born from resistance, from the need to create objects that hold both strength and vulnerability, pieces that feel like armor as much as adornment.
My practice is shaped by dualities, softness and hardness, faith and defiance, tradition and rupture. Jewelry becomes a form of self-expression that is not decorative, but declarative, a uniform, a ritual object, a symbol of presence. Each piece is reconstructed with intention, designed for those who move through the world with conviction, who defy convention, and who carry their identity with pride."
Ball Chain + Links Hook Earring $120
LAGREV: "Where does your Buenos Aires heritage meet New York’s industrial edge in your work, and how do those two worlds influence the materials and silhouettes you return to most?"
Maŕa: "My Buenos Aires heritage meets New York’s industrial edge in the tension that defines everything I make. Buenos Aires is memory, cultural weight, Catholic iconography, gothic romance, the tactile richness of leather, the emotional gravity of tradition. New York is structure, steel, hardware, infrastructure, raw energy, survival through reinvention.
My work exists as a bridge between these worlds, where Argentine roots collide with the austere precision of repurposed industrial materials. It is a dialogue between the sacred and the mechanical, the organic and the engineered.
I return again and again to silhouettes of chains, links, crosses, and leather because they speak to continuity and connection, to heritage recentered through experimentation, and to identity forged through both past and present.
This intersection is where my design language lives, Buenos Aires meeting Brooklyn, tradition meeting resistance."
LAGREV: "What draws you to reconstructing ready-made materials into jewelry, rather than designing from traditional fine-jewellery conventions?"
Maŕa: "I’m drawn to reconstructing ready-made materials because I’m interested in jewelry as something lived, not perfected. Traditional fine jewelry often begins with purity and preciousness, polished ideals of luxury.
My process begins with what already exists, hardware, chains, utilitarian forms, objects with history and weight.
Reconstruction allows the piece to carry a narrative, to transform the functional into the symbolic.
By repurposing industrial materials into jewelry, I’m not only designing an accessory, but building a new meaning from fragments.
It becomes an act of reinvention, mirroring the way identity itself is often constructed, through tension, reuse, memory, and resilience."
LAGREV: "Why was it important for the studio to create gender fluid pieces that blur the line between utility and adornment, instead of following more fixed ideas of jewelry and gender?"
Maŕa: "It was essential for the studio to create gender-fluid pieces because fixed ideas of jewelry and gender have always felt limiting. I wanted the work to exist outside those inherited boundaries.
At Maŕa Peralta Studio, jewelry is not meant to signal masculinity or femininity. It is meant to signal strength, attachment, utility, desire.
The pieces blur the line between function and ornament because that space feels the most honest, when an object can be both tool and relic, both uniform and expression.
Gender fluidity is not an aesthetic choice in the work. It is a foundation. The studio is built for those who reject convention and define themselves on their own terms."
LAGREV: "When a piece is designed to 'evolve with the wearer,' what kind of change or relationship are you hoping it develops over time?"
Maŕa: "When I think about a piece evolving with the wearer, I imagine a relationship built over time, through movement, closeness, wear, and memory. Jewelry should not remain untouched. It should scratch, move, and become personal.
I want the wearer to feel that the piece is not complete until it is lived in. Like a ritual object or a tool carried daily, it gathers meaning through intimacy.
Evolution is physical, but also emotional. The jewelry becomes part of someone’s identity, their resilience, their continuity, an object that binds the past to the present, and transforms alongside the person wearing it."
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