• THE DESIGNER
  • DESIGNER BIO



  • I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DRAWN TO MIXING
    DIFFERENT DESIGN MEDIUMS WHETHER ITS
    ARCHITECTURE, FASHION, OR JEWELRY. BYBOE
    IS ABOUT THE PURE, NATURAL ELEGANCE
    THAT COMES FROM THAT MELDING. IT'S ALSO
    ABOUT INSTINCT-FROM THE WAY IT IS
    DESIGNED TO THE WAY THAT IT'S WORN.
  • You could say the Swedish-born Annika Salame has the makings for design in her blood. Her grandparents, mother, and father all work in the fashion industry. In fact it was her mother who spent time as a fashion designer in New York City in the '60s that encouraged Annika to eventually cross an ocean to realize her dream of being a designer. "My mother always talked about New York, so it always made me want to come here", she says.
  • Annika had already been studying fashion design in Sweden when she began considering a shift in studies. The pause redirected Annika to interior design at Parsons. She admits to loving parts of the switch, but not others. "I loved furniture and interiors but not exactly being an interior designer", she says.
  • She then moved to Dubai and worked with a traditional dressmaker. The experience involved a tremendous amount of beadwork and embroidery, which the designer believes kick-started her love of embellishment and jewelry. "It really made me focus on details much more closely, seeing how they worked on various parts of the body, like jewelry". After a brief stint in L.A. doing free-lance jewelry design, she finally headed back to New York to start her own line of jewelry, open her first storefront on the Upper East Side, and launch a budding wholesale business with her husband, Philippe.
  • Using her petite shop as a public lab of sorts, Annika experimented with various materials like vintage beads, industrial materials, and unusual closures like turquoise leather chord. She quickly established a signature look mixing the architectural and modern with the pure and natural, all the while ensuring her pieces were affordable. "I think it's important that a piece can be beautifully designed and unique and still accessible," she says
  • The contrasting elements continue to work. Even with a new shop on Prince Street in SoHo and a thriving wholesale business, Annika can still be found playing around with materials and building new and unusual necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings by hand. "I love the process" she says. "And sometimes, it is just by the pure act of using my hands and messing around with the beads or chains that lead to a piece-the designs really do emerge organically."