Monica Sordo jewelry

Mónica Sordo eponymous line was born out of a return journey, a homeward bound voyage that transformed into a life project. Born in Caracas, Mónica left Venezuela at an early age to study abroad. After years of working in the fashion industry she began to suspect that her calling lay elsewhere, returning south to the heartland. There, in her father’s industrial design workshop and surrounded by her mother’s creative sensibility, Monica embarked on the quest of forging collectable pieces that explore the pursuit of permanence beyond a moment in time, through design, heritage, people, craftsmanship and collaboration.

Her time abroad was instrumental in shaping her creative foundation, establishing design at the heart of the experience through innovation and experimentation, soul and precision. In Milan, she studied Fashion Styling at the Istituto Marangoni. Years later, and established in Madrid, Mónica worked her way up the ranks of Marie Claire magazine and taught at the Istituto Europeo di Design, where she studied Fashion Merchandising. She moved to New York in 2009 to work for Christian Louboutin; meanwhile, she also specialized in Jewelry Design at the Gemological Institute of America.

New York has had a strong influence on Mónica’s work; like Manhattan’s Art Déco architecture, her creations have a touch of eclecticism, they are a balanced mélange of experiences and visual codes. From her native Caracas, she takes away a renewed love for the modernist aesthetic, as well as an appreciation for the landscapes, smells and overall identity of her youth; both influences help turn her creations in a more biomorphic direction, in works that exist somewhere between sculpture and collectable pieces.

Mónica’s creative process came full circle when she began discovering Perú and absorbed the country’s rich pre-Columbian iconography. For the past five years, she has been forging a path of commitment by crafting jewelry hand in hand with a team of artisans from San Juan de Lurigancho, one of Lima’s most underprivileged district. A firm believer in contributing to a more equitable society, Monica works with a Fair-trade International-certified atelier, and ensures they harvest a safe work environment where younger generations can learn to master valuable crafts. By merging her innovative design ideas with ancestral crafting techniques, she helps confer new value to ancient traditions.

Deeply rooted in a collaborative philosophy and the Latin design community, Mónica has been tapped for a number of distinguished projects, including the curation of designers at the Bodega MATE | Mario Testino Museum, in Peru. Her work has been featured extensively in leading fashion publications —from Vogue, L’Officiel to The New York Times—, while becoming a favorite of influential industry figures like Chloe King, Bettina Looney and Eugenia Silva. Her collections can be found in retailers around the world, including Net-a-Porter, The Webster and Printemps.

A traveler at heart, Mónica finds her creative drive in movement, translating experiences into sophisticated, innovative and uniquely functional pieces. Constantly in motion, her journey home almost a decade ago brought her back to herself, and instilled the pursuit of permanence at the core of her design mantra: to produce sustainably one must create timeless pieces to love and to hold beyond a moment in time.