Marli New York opens Madison Avenue Flagship and expands into watches

“We are only a 12-year-old brand, and we come from heritage because I was born in this industry,” said Maral Artinian, who comes from a multigenerational jewelry family. “I am with the heritage, but I’m not a heritage brand.”

Artinian’s Marli New York is a young brand by fine jewelry standards, but the founder and creative director is thinking in legacy terms by opening the doors of her second New York location, a 2,418-square-foot flagship boutique at 785 Madison Avenue.

For Artinian, the move is both strategic and symbolic. “Madison Avenue is the address that actually helps build a legacy brand adjacent to all the luxury brands,” she explained “It’s literally a landmark and a place where you build legacy.”

Artinian has built her brand around architectural design codes, New York energy, a fashion-adjacent approach and an overall less stuffy approach to fine jewelry. “For me, luxury was more about the easiness,” she said of her brand’s point of difference in a competitive landscape. Madison Avenue, she said, gives the brand the opportunity to situate itself among established luxury names while expressing its own point of view.

The opening comes as Marli continues to expand globally, with 16 locations worldwide, including boutiques in Geneva, Dubai, Riyadh and Harrods in London. Artinian said she first considered Madison Avenue in 2018 but found the environment less receptive to younger luxury players, choosing to first entered Manhattan retail at Hudson Yards, a location she sees as aligned with her brand’s earlier stage: modern, new and forward-looking.

“Madison was a little bit stuffy,” she explained. “Landlords were not open to this idea of young brands coming and taking a space. The idea was always to look into more heritage brands.”

But the Upper East Side corridor has since changed, she said, with more movement, more openness and a different energy.

“Today you can see a shift, a lot of movement,” she said. “It creates a different energy.”

Designed with architecture firm Aranda\Lasch, the boutique builds on Marli’s existing retail language while leaning further into the brand’s New York identity. Limestone surfaces, geometric lines and restrained teal accents reference both the city’s architecture and the brand’s modern Art Deco influences, while the layout shifts away from the formality traditionally associated with fine jewelry stores.

Upstairs, a private club-like space adds a softer hospitality element with lounge seating and custom design touches, including a table created with New York-based designer Djivan Schapira. Jewelry and watches are displayed together throughout the boutique, reinforcing Artinian’s view of the categories as extensions of the same design vocabulary rather than separate businesses.

“Retail space today is not about only being a commercial space. It’s really an expression of the brand,” she said. “It’s where the products become tangible.”

That philosophy reflects her broader belief that fine jewelry retail has to overcome some of the category’s traditional barriers. Security guards, locked doors and display cases can make jewelry feel intimidating, she said, explaining that her goal is to create a space that still communicates luxury, but with a sense ease.

“I want to take who I am and who I became in New York and infuse it in the boutique,” she said, including hospitality touches informed by Artinian’s own background and her life. “New York luxury is all about comfort. It’s about being very attainable and flexible.”

The opening also coincides with the brand’s recent entry into watchmaking, having debuted timepieces in Geneva during Watches and Wonders, though it showed the collection from its own boutique rather than inside the fair. The collection includes three case sizes and designs in rose gold, white gold, stainless steel and titanium, with natural mother-of-pearl dials and details drawn from the brand’s jewelry codes.

Artinian is careful not to position the launch as attempting to compete with the major heritage watch houses. “Our space is more design and jewelry-led timepieces and not heritage brand space,” she explained. “We want to play in our own zone, which is fashion-forward, design-led. And of course, craftsmanship is very important.”

That component is central to how she is building credibility in a category dominated by long-established Swiss names. The brand has acquired manufacturing in Le Locle, Switzerland, which Artinian said gives the timepieces greater legitimacy and allows the brand to test prototypes and refine the product internally.

“There was a lot of intention,” Artinian said, adding that development took five years. “The design of the watch didn’t happen just by chance. There was a lot of work put into it.”

They are merchandised alongside her jewelry, a reflection on Artinian’s view that the timepieces are an extension of the same design language rather than a separate category. “The idea is always to style the timepieces with the jewelry,” she said.

The approach points to the founder’s larger ambition. Asked whether she thinks of Marli as a jewelry brand, a watch brand or something broader, she did not hesitate: “Marli is an experience in general.”

As she enters a new phase, Artinian appears less interested in mimicking the codes of old luxury than in building a house with its own: rooted in craft, but intentionally less rigid; aspirational, but designed to feel personal; importantly New York in name, but increasingly global in view.

“Every success we have is a celebration for another ambition,” she said.