Korman, who moved to LA from New York City in 1996, had never spent much time downtown before she started her business. Initially, she was stymied by the jewelry district’s culture of secrecy. “People don’t like to tell you where they’re making anything,” she says. “Somebody told me to just walk into every single building and every single shop and learn what they do and that’s what I did.”
Pounding the pavement paid off. Korman found a large factory on Olive Street owned by a local Armenian family that now manufactures her 18-karat-gold and gemstone line. And even though it would be less expensive to have her designs produced overseas, she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I live on the Westside of LA, but when I drive downtown there’s an aliveness there,” she says.
