The Heritage-Inspired Jewelry Brand You Need To Know

Calling all jewelry lovers, this one’s for you. In today’s newsletter, I had the pleasure of speaking with Meg Strachan, Founder & CEO of celebrity-beloved diamond brand, Dorsey. After years in direct-to-consumer marketing, the marketer, now founder, speaks to founding her lab-grown gemstone brand and her love of fashion, all stemming from her ever-stylish grandmother, Dorsey. — Samantha

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THE CLOSE-UP

Meg Strachan on Disrupting the Diamond Market

By Samantha Wu

Welcome to The Close-Up, where we indulge in conversations with tastemakers, entrepreneurs, designers, and others paving the way in their respective industries. Focusing on the people at the forefront of innovative companies, join us as we uncover their style ethos, guiding principles, challenges, and insights that have made them successful in the worlds of fashion, beauty, art, and beyond.

In today’s newsletter, I share my conversation with Dorsey founder and fashion industry vet, Meg Strachan. After years in the marketing space, Meg shares how she founded the lab-grown diamond brand, Dorsey, sharing her perspective on the growth of lab-grown gemstones and the white space she filled in the jewelry market.

Samantha Wu: I'd love to start off by hearing about your fashion industry experience and how that impacted your decision to start Dorsey.

Meg Strachan: I have been working in the fashion industry for 18 years. The very beginning of my career was in buying and merchandising. As a merchant, you're always working with marketing teams. You're talking about product positioning and how a model's going to wear something. You spend a lot of time taking the merchandise that you bought for a company or a brand and seeing it through a marketing lens: how you wear it, where someone's wearing something, and the mood of what they're wearing. That's kind of what creates a brand. So the start of my career was in merchandising, but at a certain point, I transitioned into growth marketing roles.

My positions have been in overseeing creative and brand, and the early merchandising moments that I had in my career started to inform how I think about product. I started to think about the disconnect between merchant and marketing teams. I think because I spent so many years working between the two, my view of how you build a company shifted and changed. Most of my career has been in the intersection of e-commerce and marketing, which is really where brands come to life. 

SW: I'd also love to talk about your Substack. What has writing What I Put On Today taught you about the fashion industry, and has it changed the way that you get dressed and think about style in general?

MS: I started my Substack without putting much thought into it. I'm someone who loves to get dressed and to discover new brands. I love to see some guy on the street in a sweater and ask him where his sweater is from and then go buy it and then tell my friends that I found the amazing oversized black cashmere sweater we're all looking for, it’s a size medium from J Crew in the men's section. Over the last several years, I've always posted [on Instagram], "Oh, these pants are by so-and-so," or, "If you're looking for a neutral shoe, here's some that I really like."

I was interested in Substack because it was a place to house a link that existed forever. Also, because I wanted a place to do longer form posts that just didn't disappear. I wanted a place where I could put stuff that wasn't on Instagram. When Instagram first started and I only saw posts from people who I knew or followed, it felt really different than it does today. Substack was a way for me to talk about products that I would wear and have it be more of a contained space. 

Genuinely, I did not think anyone would read my Substack, and I feel very self-conscious in a lot of ways about it to this day. I've built a company, and we launch campaigns and new products, and there's so much creativity that I'm putting out into the world all the time via that, but I find myself to be so timid about pressing send on my Substack.

SW: For someone who might be unfamiliar, could you explain your brand and what you were looking to solve in the jewelry space when you founded Dorsey?

MS: My grandmother was a jewelry collector. She had the most incredible drawers in her closet that were filled with vintage jewelry from her grandmother and her mom, and jewelry from traveling and collecting over the years, like 1920s red carpet-looking earrings. I grew up in her jewelry drawers and watching the way she wore jewelry. When I think of Dorsey, I first think of her jewelry, then I think of her jackets or her trousers. She taught me everything about jewelry, the clasp, and why she thought a piece was special. She had no formal training, she was just someone who had a great love for it.

During my time in the fashion industry, I noticed that there wasn't any sort of heritage-inspired jewelry. It certainly wasn't done in lab-grown stones. I was in my 30s when I started Dorsey. I wanted a diamond necklace and a really beautiful diamond necklace is $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. I started to think, “Why isn't anyone using sterling silver and lab-grown stones and why are there so many companies that make smaller gold jewelry, but no one building a stone company with lab-grown stones that is not also bridal?” Dorsey does only lab-grown stones in our jewelry, we do sterling silver and 14 carat is 98% of the styles that we sell.

When I had the idea for the business, I was in Paris for work and I was in a flea market and I picked up a pair of old French earrings with these big stones in them. They were so beautiful, and the back fell off, and I thought to myself, I would've loved to buy these and send them to my grandmother, but they'll break. How come this type of jewelry doesn't really exist at the price point that I'm looking for?

For the first time, I thought to myself, maybe I'm going to do that. I think I'm going to start this company. I don't have a background in jewelry. It's an industry run mostly by men, especially the diamond industry. I had a lot of people, a lot of men, tell me that I was wrong about the company that I was starting. I just decided, I'm a consumer and this is the jewelry and price point that I'm looking for. Lab-grown, four years ago, was very new. It's still really new, but I think this is the future. I saw there was a vacancy and now we've grown an incredible amount, and it's been amazing that so many other women felt that vacancy as well.

SW: Can you share your perspective on the rapid growth of the lab-grown diamond space? 

MS:  When I first started my company, no one really knew what lab-grown was and people would almost refer to them as fake stones. What's been amazing is, after the last four years, there’s no longer the question. People know that they're a real stone. The FTC says they're diamonds because they are diamonds, they're molecularly exactly the same. They're still graded the same way as mined diamonds.

The marketing behind mined diamonds was developed a very long time ago, and it is very ingrained, but I think women, in particular, are very aware of what the marketing is, especially behind bridal. I can only speak to my own experience, so I will here: everything was about getting in the engagement rings and getting engaged, and the jewelry industry was very narrow for me as a consumer. I would go into stores and I felt awkward. Jewelry just felt so exclusive. What I love about the lab-grown industry is it includes a lot more clients, and it genuinely does democratize something that used to be reserved for the very wealthy.

At Dorsey, we don't see other lab-grown companies as our competition. We see the mined diamond industry pretty openly degrading the lab-grown consumer. On the contrary, lab-grown stones and the metals that we use are luxury. We are positioning ourselves to redefine what a lab-grown company does in general, but certainly from a marketing perspective, because we are not going to be a company that demeans the consumer. This is a beautiful piece of jewelry and we're so proud to be a lab-grown company. 

SW: I’d love to hear what Dorsey pieces are aligned most with your style. You have so many beautiful pieces, but what are your top three?

MS: I tend to wear jewelry on a concentrated jewelry part of my body at once. If I'm wearing earrings, I'll do a big earring with a bunch of additional earrings up the same ear, but I won't wear a necklace or a bunch of rings or bracelets. If I'm doing something on my wrist, I'll wear three bracelets on my wrist and then a big cocktail ring. Most people layer it, and I love layering on everyone but me. My favorite piece of jewelry right now is our rings because they're new and I love a cocktail ring so much. That's what my grandmother always wore and I've been layering a bunch on one finger and wearing it with a big coat. You still see your jewelry, you still see your rings right now before we're all wearing gloves. I would say that I think our rings and our bracelets right now, I've been doing a wrist moment and a hand moment. 

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