Taking the risk to become a fine jewelry designer has been a gem of a decision for this architecture-trained Puerto Rican.
Last summer, Marcia Budet GAr’10 GFA’10 made a “touching, full-circle” trip to her favorite building on Penn’s campus. Fourteen years after earning her diploma from the Weitzman School of Design just outside the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Budet returned to the iconic Frank Furness–designed building to drop off the book Women of Jewelry to add it to the library’s permanent collection.
The book, authored by Linda Kozloff-Turner, features interviews and works by 100 female jewelry designers from all over the world—including Budet, who proudly notes that she is the “only Puerto Rican included.”
“It is going to be there forever, available to every person, from Penn faculty to alumni to students,” she says. “Maybe it will encourage them to take risks like I did.”
Budet’s risks began early. She was the first person in her family to earn a master’s degree, which she got from Penn, where she studied architecture. She pivoted to start a fine jewelry business, despite no experience or connections. But a decade later, her pieces have been on display at the Met Gala and New York Fashion Week, published in British Vogue, Elle, and WWD, and garnered awards from all over the world, including in 2023 from the prestigious American Gem Trade Association. “Sometimes I still think, What is happening?” she laughs.
Budet always had a passion for jewelry. Growing up in Puerto Rico, she loved going to a kids’ educational store filled with books and experiments. One day she took home a kit packed with gemstones, which led to a hobby of collecting stones. The kit remains in her office to this day. “It’s very precious to me,” she says. “I can still tell you the type of gemstones that were my favorites back then. Coming full circle, I now integrate them into my collections.”
She decided to go to school for architecture, first as an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico and then as a graduate student at Penn. “My 17-year-old brain said, ‘Pick something that would give you opportunities,’ and you see architects designing jewelry, furniture, interior design, all these other fields,” she says.
Her three-year course at Penn was particularly challenging because “it was kind of hard to learn these words related to construction,” she notes. “I had to learn how to communicate.” She took classes in calculus, structure, and urban design. Much of her work was practical. For example, for a studio class she traveled to Mexico to help design an addition to a museum. “It was very demanding,” she says. “We would often sleep in the studio.”
Part of Puerto Rican culture involves receiving heirlooms and special gifts to mark different stages of life, says Budet, noting she still has pearls from her first communion. So, after graduation, when she wanted a piece of jewelry to mark the transition between student and professional life, her mom suggested she try to make something herself. “She said to me, ‘You can design buildings. Why wouldn’t you take a stab at designing a ring?’”
The piece she made, a two-finger ring with two asymmetrically cut gemstones and three round diamonds, ended up winning an award from a design competition in Italy that a fellow Penn student suggested she enter. “It was a very powerful, very big cocktail ring, a conversation piece,” she says. “It’s like a mini sculpture.”
Budet won the same competition a year later after submitting earrings she made for a friend’s wedding. That’s when she got serious about pursuing a career as a fine jewelry designer. “I thought, I need to try this out, because if not I will regret that.”
In 2013 Budet moved to New York City, where she took business classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She was also selected for Design Entrepreneurs NYC, a program that helps promising designers create business plans. “That was a defining program, giving me the confidence to commit to this full time,” she says. “I was like, I think I can do this.” She launched her own collections and started doing private work for clients.
In 2014 a makeup artist connected her with a politician who was attending the Met Gala, and she couldn’t believe it when she saw her jewelry being worn on the prestigious red carpet. “It’s the magic of New York,” she says. A year later she collaborated with a friend she knew from FIT to create looks for a runway show during New York Fashion Week.
After starting to source diamonds and deal with “super expensive stones” for her bridal collections, Budet decided during the pandemic to enroll in the Gemological Institute of America in New York City. The program was rigorous. “I had to learn the chemical composition of every single stone,” she says. “It is super complex, and you also have to know the origins and the history. I had the time of my life, and I loved every second of it, but it was hard.”
It also changed her jewelry designs. “I discovered my love for the emerald, which is now my favorite precious stone,” she says. “I started doing a bunch of pieces with diamond and emerald and yellow gold.” One of her works (a pair of Colombian emerald and diamond modular earrings she designed for a private client) won an American Gem Trade Association Spectrum Award, one of the most prestigious in the industry.
Budet now hopes her story—and others that are featured in the Women of Jewelry book—will motivate other aspiring artists. “I had no idea what I was doing when I started my jewelry business,” she says. “I took the risk anyway.”
—Alyson Krueger C’07
