Our Story

Wild Made wasn't born overnight. It has been decades in the making.

I'm Gretchen Julius-Whitehead, founder and artistic director of Wild Made, and I design every piece myself. I earned my BFA in Jewelry and Light Metals at the Rhode Island School of Design, trained as a goldsmith at Reinstein Ross in New York, and have spent over 25 years in jewelry, with a career running through Barneys New York, Ralph Lauren, and Japanese Vogue. I have lived this industry from every angle.

My first collection, in the early 2000s, planted a seed. It traveled through Japanese Vogue and sold at Reinstein Ross and Fragments in New York. Then life shaped the rest. Triplets. Careers. Years of moving between personal and corporate work, mothering, and finding my way back to the work I knew I was meant to make.

In 2024, I took the leap. Wild Made is the collection I have spent a lifetime building toward. Jewelry that does not just sit on the body but carries meaning on it. Each piece moved through sketches, samples, and edits, every decision made to elevate the work beyond adornment.

Some of it has come full circle. I took my first jewelry class at the Toledo Museum of Art as a child, and today Wild Made is carried at the Toledo Museum of Art and the Toledo Zoo. The collection has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and Voyage Ohio, and it won Best in Show at Wild About Art at the Toledo Zoo in 2025 and at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in 2026, competing across all media.

Animals are a profound source of inspiration. They reflect our essence and remind us of our connection to the world and to ourselves. Our debut collection, Untamed, is a tribute to a transformative journey to Africa during my college years, where I traveled with my brother and came home changed.

These are talismans. Made to be lived in, passed down, held onto. Hearing that they serve as daily reminders of your strength, wisdom, and grace is what makes the work worth it.

Gretchen Julius-Whitehead

Founder and Artistic Director, Wild Made

Every Wild Made piece begins as my own sketch. I develop each design in CAD and samples, then work closely with a small family-run workshop, led by a longtime friend, where every piece is cast in high quality brass, plated in a thick layer of genuine 14k gold or rhodium, set with high grade cubic zirconia, and polished by hand in small batches. Each design is independently tested for plating thickness and durability, exceeding the standards of typical fashion jewelry.