From Fashion to Fine Jewelry: Marlene Haase and the Search for Something That Lasts
What happens when a fashion designer begins thinking less about seasons and more about permanence?
For Marlene Haase, the answer led from clothing and accessories to fine jewelry—and from an education in Berlin to a career in New York.
Haase is a compelling example of a generation of designers increasingly difficult to define through a single discipline. Her trajectory has taken her from fashion studies in Berlin and experience with Viktor&Rolf and Walter Van Beirendonck to Parsons School of Design in New York, where her graduate collection was presented at New York Fashion Week in 2022. Her work has since appeared in publications including Vogue Runway, V Magazine, Document Journal, Sleek and ICON.
Today, she works as a jewelry designer at Lorraine Schwartz in New York, designing collection pieces as well as bespoke jewelry for high-profile clients and occasions including the Oscars, the Met Gala and the Grammys.
Yet what makes Haase's trajectory interesting is not simply the accumulation of prestigious names. Across fashion, accessories and jewelry, she has returned to the same fascination: materials, the stories they carry, and what a designer can make them become.
“I have always seen the different design disciplines as closely interconnected,” Haase says. “In both fashion and jewelry, I am particularly drawn to exceptional materials—their inherent qualities, the craftsmanship they require, and the possibility of creating lasting pieces that tell a story around them.”
A Creative Education Across Cities
In many ways, design was present in Haase's life long before it became a profession. Her mother is a photographer, her aunt an architect, and her grandparents worked as an illustrator and creative directors. She grew up around photography sets, fashion, accessories, art and design.
A creative career therefore felt natural. Finding her own language as a designer would take her through several cities and very different creative environments.
At the University of the Arts in Berlin, where she studied Fashion Design, Haase learned to approach design through research—not simply asking how something should look, but investigating the cultural context and history surrounding it.
“My professors had an incredible knowledge of fashion history and the wider cultural context of design,” she recalls. “There was a very inspiring atmosphere of exchange, experimentation, and exploration.”
Professional experiences broadened that education. Haase worked with Viktor&Rolf in Amsterdam and Walter Van Beirendonck in Antwerp, as well as with New York designer Melitta Baumeister. Her work in accessories in particular encouraged a growing interest in the territory between fashion and jewelry.
The shift was not a rejection of fashion. Haase increasingly saw clothing, accessories and jewelry as different expressions of the same concerns: form, material and craftsmanship.
Then came New York.
Haase moved to the city to complete the MFA Fashion Design & Society at Parsons School of Design. If Berlin had taught her how to research and contextualize her ideas, Parsons pushed her to articulate a more individual creative voice—and to understand how that voice operates within a collaborative industry.
“A collection is never created in isolation,” she says. “It involves working with stylists, photographers, producers, craftspeople, and many other creative minds to bring an idea to life and communicate it in the right way.”
Her graduate collection was presented at New York Fashion Week in 2022.
From Cotton to Gold
That collection offers perhaps the clearest link between the fashion designer Haase was becoming and the jewelry designer she is today.
Its starting point was cotton—one of the world's most familiar materials.
Haase became fascinated by the complexity hidden behind something so ordinary: its history and its relationship to labor, mass production, fast fashion, sustainability and environmental concerns.
“It is an incredible material because something that seems so simple carries such a complex history and touches on many political, social, and environmental issues,” she says.
Instead of treating those questions as background research, Haase incorporated them into the design process itself. Material became a way of telling a larger story.
The collection drew attention beyond Parsons. Her work was featured by publications including Vogue Runway, V Magazine, Document Journal and Sleek, while ICON explored the social and environmental ideas behind her approach to cotton.
“Material has always been a starting point for my work,” Haase explains. “I am interested not only in its visual or physical qualities, but also in the stories, history, and associations it carries.”
Today, the vocabulary has changed. Instead of cotton, Haase might begin with gold or onyx. But the instinct is surprisingly similar.
Finding Her Place in New York
Haase initially came to New York for Parsons. What made her stay was the city itself.
“For me, New York is one of the most inspiring cities in the world,” she says. “There is creative energy everywhere.”
What appeals to her is partly the proximity of different worlds. Designers, artists, photographers, stylists, models and craftspeople coexist within the same creative landscape, making unexpected encounters and collaborations possible.
Her description of where she finds inspiration captures that range particularly well. On one day, it might mean visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to study historic jewelry. On another, it might simply mean taking the subway and noticing how someone has combined clothes and accessories.
“There is also an openness to new ideas and individuality that I find very special,” she says. “You can dress however you want, experiment, and develop your own identity without feeling that you need to conform.”
The city eventually became the place where her growing fascination with jewelry could become a profession.
At Lorraine Schwartz, Haase is involved in developing both collection and bespoke jewelry, following designs from their earliest concepts through technical development and final production.
The process can begin with research and a sketch, then move through detailed renderings, technical drawings and three-dimensional prototypes before the piece reaches its final materials.
“Bringing a piece of jewelry to life is a very detailed and collaborative process,” she says. “It is very rewarding to see an idea that started as a drawing gradually become a finished piece of jewelry.”
Some of those creations are designed with an unusually visible destination in mind. Her work can involve jewelry intended for major cultural events such as the Oscars, Met Gala and Grammys.
In those cases, context becomes part of the design.
“You know what outfit it will be worn with, the colors, the occasion, and sometimes the personality of the person,” Haase explains. “That creates a more direct exchange and can influence certain design decisions.”
There is an intensity to working toward a single public moment, she says, and a particular satisfaction in eventually seeing the finished object worn.
Designing Beyond a Season
Yet the public visibility of those occasions is not ultimately what Haase finds most compelling about jewelry.
It is something quieter: its relationship with time.
“What particularly fascinates me about jewelry is its permanence,” she says. “I strongly believe in quality and longevity, and I consider it a privilege to work with precious materials and create pieces that can be worn for generations.”
Even if a jewel is eventually dismantled or redesigned, she points out, its precious materials can remain. Gold can be transformed. Stones can find new settings. An object can take on another form without simply disappearing.
That notion of permanence provides an unexpected thread through a career that has crossed Berlin, Amsterdam, Antwerp and New York—and moved from garments to accessories to fine jewelry.
“I think what connects all these stages is a constant process of exploration and finding my own direction as a designer,” Haase says.
Berlin gave her the foundations of that language. Working with designers such as Viktor&Rolf and Walter Van Beirendonck brought her into the professional world of fashion and accessories. Parsons and New York allowed those experiences to converge. Jewelry ultimately offered something she had been moving toward all along: the possibility of combining material, craftsmanship and storytelling in an object intended to outlive the moment in which it was created.
The materials have changed. The question behind them has not.
For Marlene Haase, design is still about discovering what a material can become—and, increasingly, how long the story it carries might last.
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