Arianna Calabrese is a jewelry designer and the founder of Iaia Caravan, a fine jewelry brand working in 22kt gold. Her pieces are handbuilt (no castings) in close collaboration with artisan partners in Jaipur and Myanmar, with plans to expand further internationally, working across granulation, stone carving, stone cutting, enamel, and specialized setting techniques. The work is sculptural and tactile, concerned with weight, volume, and how an object feels in the hand and on the body. Raised between the United States and Southern Italy, she trained at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service before building a practice that has moved between making, diplomacy, and cultural education for over a decade.
Her jewelry practice began in 2015 with ULUZZO, her handmade cross-cultural collection developed in West Africa and Southern Italy—work that established the core preoccupations she has carried forward. After Georgetown, she joined the Gem Palace in Jaipur, one of the oldest fine jewelry houses in India, where she produced the Spring 2019 MUNNU collection, overseeing multiple workshops with over 100 specialized craftsmen. She learned to cut, polish, and set stones herself in 22kt gold and silver while also managing the showroom, client commissions, and VIP travel to Qatar and the U.S. She then joined KHIRY, the New York-based Afrofuturist luxury brand, as Production and Operations Lead. There she supported the team on all fronts: working and helping to produce KHIRY's debut New York Fashion Week show, launch a collaboration with De Beers that debuted at the 2021 Met Gala, and grow wholesale revenue by approximately 30x.
Alongside that industry work, she built an equally serious engagement with policy and supply chain. As Director of Davos at the Altru Institute, and the organization's first UN Fellow, she designed and moderated ten sessions at the 2020 World Economic Forum, drawing over 250 business leaders and innovators to programming on fast fashion, ocean plastics, climate, and global health. As a sustainability consultant at Turquoise Mountain, she produced the organization's first Environmental and Ethical Policy and analyzed heritage supply chains across Afghanistan, Myanmar, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Her BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown, with a specialization in Culture and Politics, shapes how she understands where materials come from, who makes them, and what it means to move them across borders.
Iaia Caravan launched in 2023 during Paris Fashion Week. Its debut collection, Seeds, meditates on the movement of seeds across human migration routes. In 2025, Arianna developed a proposal for a Made-in-Botswana fine jewelry capsule collection to be presented at the U.N. General Assembly, in partnership with Motswana designer Caiphas Othomile, aligned with SDGs 8, 9, and 12.
She also teaches children's visual art through Scribble Art in New York City and caters multinational gatherings for Where There Be Dragons as extensions of the same instinct that animates the jewelry practice.
She splits her time between New York, El Salvador, and Jaipur.
