Hirotaka Jewelry

 

“Alysa Liu wore an earring by Hirotaka Inoue during her gold medal-winning skate, sparking new interest in the Japanese designer’s brand.

 

Even before Alysa Liu delivered her individual gold medal-winning performance in February at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan, the 20-year-old American figure skater’s free-spirited style had fascinated fans. And during her joyous free skate — in a whirl of gold spangles and shimmering fringe — some noticed a glint of silver in her right ear.

 

An Instagram influencer who goes by the name Jewel Boxing was among the first to recognize it as a small silver huggie hoop holding a smaller, thinner 10-karat gold ring, a single earring design in the Dune collection by Hirotaka, a contemporary fine jewelry brand in Tokyo.

 

In April 2025, Ms. Liu had been in the city for a competition and the brand had invited her to visit its store in the Azabudai Hills area. While she was there, representatives said, she was given the Dune piece ($690) and a Sakura Spear earring ($1,040). (Ms. Liu, who now is a headliner at the “Stars on Ice” tour, did not respond to requests for comment.)

 

The brand’s sales team said recently that the Olympics-related social media attention generated noteworthy sales of the earring online and it sold out in several of its nine boutiques around Japan.

 

Hirotaka Inoue, 55, the brand’s founder and designer, said during a recent video interview from his office in Tokyo’s Aoyama district that he had always been interested in art and photography, but did not focus on jewelry until he was in his early 20s and living in Paris. He returned to Japan, where he first worked for a jewelry wholesaler and then began making bespoke pieces in high-karat gold and gems such as emerald and jadeite for private customers.

 

But by 2010, then in his late 20s, he changed course and founded Hirotaka. “I felt the need to design a collection that accentuated your daily style rather than overwhelm it,” he said.

 

At the time, Mr. Inoue said, New York City had felt like the ideal place to introduce his first designs, which included gold bar necklaces, ear cuffs and stacking rings pavéd with diamonds. So he brought them to the Henri Bendel department store, now defunct, which allowed emerging designers to present their work to the store’s buyers on Friday mornings.

 

“I remember waiting in a queue for many, many hours in the rain,” he recalled. But Bendel’s buyers passed.

 

It wasn’t until months later, during a small trunk show at the Crosby Street Hotel in the city’s SoHo neighborhood, that Mr. Inoue’s use of affordable 10-karat gold and tiny diamonds — as well as what was then the new trend of “mismatching” designs — caught the attention of retailers such as Barneys New York.

 

Hirotaka now has 30 collections that include about 100 earring, necklace, ring, bracelet and brooch designs. Most are sold as single pieces, with prices ranging from about $210 for a gold chain that is meant to be threaded through a piercing to $11,110 for the pair of 18-karat Snake Knot earrings with 0.23 carats of diamonds.

 

In addition to its online presence and retail locations in Japan, Hirotaka is sold at stores such as Broken English in New York and Santa Monica, Calif., and Ounass in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 

Alicia Lombardini, a stylist in New York City, described borrowing “piles” of Hirotaka pieces to dress celebrity clients such as Sandra Oh, Cynthia Nixon and Carrie Coon.

 

The brand’s earrings, she noted during a recent phone interview, “feel good on the ear” and have an appealingly sculptural quality. “If you’re seeing someone in profile, the pieces really do stand out,” she said.

 

For example, she recently styled Ms. Coon in a pair of Hirotaka’s Bird of Paradise earrings, dangling chiseled squares of blue tiger’s-eye, because the star of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” and “The White Lotus” was appearing on “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”

 

“I try to balance masculine and feminine and softness with edginess,” Ms. Lombardini said, adding that Hirotaka pieces tend to be a good choice for telling that type of story.

 

On May 21 the Bird of Paradise collection is scheduled to expand with five new designs showcasing green agate, carnelian and Dalmatian jasper in round and oblong shapes — the latter, Mr. Inoue noted, “looks a little like a mint.”

 

The collection itself is meant to be an abstracted vision of the tropical bird expressed in colored stones. But then Mr. Inoue’s inspirations are rarely literal.

 

“Japanese art is very abstract,” he said. “Subtraction is the key.”” [1]

 

1. His Jewelry Made the Olympics. Elliott, Amy.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. May 10, 2026.