Gem of the Exchange From Winnipeg to Santa Monica, Hilary Druxman Design still shines after three decades Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 5:27 PM CDT Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024

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This article was published 01/08/2024 (752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon in July and jewelry designer Hilary Druxman is meeting with a customer and her niece to discuss a commission.

The customer wants to celebrate her niece, who just got into medical school, by giving her a custom bracelet.

“Making those pieces is very special,” Druxman told the Free Press later. “It’s nice to be able to be connected to people that way.”

Druxman’s life in jewelry has taken her from her childhood home in St. Vital to a storefront in Santa Monica, Calif., but the Exchange District is where she’s found a lasting home for her operation.

Located in the Merchants Building at 258 McDermot Ave., Hilary Druxman Design offers an array of earrings, rings and necklaces handcrafted in sterling silver or gold. Simple and accessible, the designs are meant to be timeless and appropriate for every occasion.

Everything is made on site.

Lining the walls of the retail space are 21 cases containing 75 necklaces from Druxman’s Good Works collection — one-of-a-kind pieces she creates to benefit non-profits. So far, she’s raised nearly $1 million for more than 80 charitable causes.

The company marked its 30th anniversary in March — a few days after Druxman, who was born in a leap year, turned 60 (or 15, as she likes to quip).

“It’s exciting,” Druxman said of marking three decades in business. “It’s been a journey with lots of ups and downs.”

“It’s been a journey with lots of ups and downs.”

Druxman had no experience with jewelry when she landed a job at Dunn Jewellers, a family-run company downtown, just after finishing a degree in English and economics at the University of Manitoba.

She performed clerical work at Dunn so she could make money to go travelling.

After backpacking in Europe, Druxman returned to Dunn to work and save more money — this time so she could go back to school to study interior design. When that didn’t pan out, seeing the goldsmiths work at the jewelry store inspired her to craft her own pieces.

While working at Dunn, she earned a gemology certificate by correspondence from the Gemological Institute of America. She furthered her education by reading the trade magazines that arrived at the store and learned basic casting and soldering in a night class offered at a local school.

Soon Druxman was making jewelry in the basement of her River Heights home.

In 1994, she incorporated her business. She took samples to showrooms in Toronto and New York to drum up orders. She hired a couple of employees to work alongside her in the basement as she completed wholesale manufacturing for other stores.

By 2000, she had moved into a 1,000-square-foot space on the sixth floor of the Silpit Building on Arthur Street.

That’s when things really exploded, Druxman said. At one point, she employed 25 people to keep up with the demand of selling to 300 stores across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Druxman’s mother-in-law lived in Santa Monica and had experience running boutiques, so in 2004 Druxman opened a storefront on Montana Avenue, an upscale shopping and dining destination in the California city.

“TV and film crews — and associated glitterati — have been stockpiling her minimalist silver, gold and precious-gem-laden trinkets,” Elle magazine wrote in 2006. “Druxman’s following includes Diane Sawyer, Harrison Ford … along with Sarah Jessica Parker’s costume designer Suzanne McCabe.”

In the same article, Curb Your Enthusiasm costume designer Christine Mongini raved about a pair of Druxman’s multi-strand, pink-sapphire and 18-karat-gold chain-link earrings she bought for co-star Cheryl Hines to wear in the HBO show’s 10th episode.

“I just love Hilary Druxman jewels,” Mongini told Elle. “It’s hard to find fine, delicate, interesting jewelry at such reasonable prices.”

“It’s hard to find fine, delicate, interesting jewelry at such reasonable prices.”

Druxman moved her Winnipeg operation to the Merchants Building in 2007, opening her first storefront in the city — a 1,000-square-foot shop with a 2,500-square-foot factory in the back.

Rising rent costs made staying on Montana Avenue impossible, so she closed her Santa Monica store in 2009. That same year, she opened a second Winnipeg store at the Richardson International Airport for a few months.

Today, Druxman’s company is thriving in its one location in the Exchange.

She has 10 full-time employees, including Jennifer Mizak, a goldsmith with 40 years of experience, and Gene “The Genius” Mayoralgo, a third-generation goldsmith from the Philippines who started his apprenticeship when he was just 14.

The store is filled with pieces from the 60-plus collections the company has produced over the years.

Druxman continues to add to the Good Works collection every now and then. The pieces have benefitted everyone from Harvest Manitoba to the United Way of Winnipeg to the Joy Smith Foundation, created by the former MLA to combat human trafficking.

It’s Druxman’s way of giving back to the community.

“I’m always busy at work — I can’t really volunteer for all these good causes,” she said. “But (Good Works is) a way to get involved with them.”

As for Druxman’s business, the focus these days is less on creating new collections and more on creating custom pieces and fixing jewelry.

Writer, philanthropist and University of Manitoba chancellor Anne Mahon is a regular customer who has commissioned a few pieces from Druxman, including a necklace made of black onyx beads that she wears with her convocation robe.

“I’m always proud to wear Hilary’s work and I always know with great confidence that it looks good,” Mahon said.

As much as the jewelry is striking, so too is the kindness and generosity Druxman brings to her interactions with customers.

“I don’t mean to make a pun, but Hilary is a gem in the city of Winnipeg,” Mahon said. “Her work has been at the centre of so many people’s happy moments.

“Really, it’s not just the work and the artistry of what she does, it’s how she does it — she does it with such care and really such love for her clients.”

“If I’m out in the grocery store or I’m at a restaurant and the server has one of my necklaces on… it gives me a little joy.”

While she used to prefer to stay at her work bench, talking with customers gives Druxman the greatest satisfaction these days.

“I could spend all day out there just chatting, hearing their stories,” she said.

Seeing everyday Winnipeggers wear her jewelry is more meaningful to Druxman than it was seeing celebrities wearing it 20 years ago, she said.

“I want to design so people will sort of put a thing on and it becomes their signature piece and that they wear it all the time,” she said.

“So it’s always nice to see people wear it. If I’m out in the grocery store or I’m at a restaurant and the server has one of my necklaces on… it gives me a little joy.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca