Designers to Watch: Natalie O.

For Natalie Katz O’Brien, jewelry is more than adornment — it is a reflection of memory, architecture, travel, and the quiet details that shape how we move through the world. A native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn and raised in a family where curiosity about culture and place was encouraged, O’Brien’s earliest memories are filled with adventure.

“I spent a lot of time squished in the back of the car with my family traveling,” she recalled.

Her parents were passionate travelers and philanthropists, introduced her to museums, global cuisine, and the art of observing the world with an inquisitive eye. Those formative experiences would later become the foundation for her design language.

O’Brien studied interior design at Parsons School of Design with early ambitions of becoming an architect. But while the discipline fascinated her, she soon realized the career path itself was not the right fit. Instead, her creative instincts led her into the antique market and eventually the launch of her own interior design firm. There, she designed model apartments for buildings developed by her father while also working on atriums and conservatories — spaces where structure, light, and form interact.

Then life shifted. As the mother of three children — now 17, 19, and 21 — O’Brien stepped away from her professional work to focus on raising her family. Yet the desire to return to a creative field never left her.

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