Architect Ayça Özbank has been reinventing jewelry in Paris since founding Mara Paris in 2015 with designer Gökçe Taskan. Born in Istanbul, shaped by Venice, Milan and Helsinki, she synthesizes multiple cultures of art and design into pieces that inhabit the body — sensual in form, rigorous in structure, generous in wear. Crafted in precious metals, the house designs across generations and beyond gender.
What architecture does for the city,
Mara Paris does for the body.
Ayça Özbank's vision for Mara Paris begins with a way of thinking that moves across disciplines. Trained as an architect, she brings an instinct for space, proportion, material and emotion. The work is an ongoing search of form for design objects made for the body.
Her path through Istanbul, Venice, Milan and Helsinki continues to shape this vision. Each city leaves a trace, as a way of seeing: the sensuality of ornament, the discipline of proportion, the restraint of gesture, the intelligence of use. Together, these influences form a language that belongs to Mara Paris.
In architectural projects, form does not appear from nowhere. It emerges from everything gathered before it: memories, needs, tensions, technical realities, gestures, materials and intuitions. These layers become the foundation from which the right form can appear. Mara Paris follows the same process. Every piece is built through layers, added, questioned and refined until it reaches a point of clarity, where nothing feels excessive and nothing feels missing.
This search for form remains at the center of everything. For Ayça, form is never about appearance alone. A form must hold more than beauty; it must carry structure, function and emotion. It must create a response: a tension, a sensuality, a feeling that is difficult to explain but immediately understood.
The line between architecture and sculpture has always felt incredibly thin to me. Frank Gehry once said, «Architecture is, by definition, a three-dimensional object, therefore sculpture.» That idea stays with me and continues to shape many of the pieces I design.
For more than ten years, Mara Paris has been building a body of work rather than a succession of seasons. Each collection extends the corpus, adding new forms without replacing the ones that came before. Across collections, the intention has remained constant: to create pieces with enduring design, lasting use, and a desirability that does not fade.
Each piece is made in limited, regular production runs, in collaboration with expert ateliers across France, Portugal, Spain and Istanbul. Depending on its complexity, a jewel may pass through eight to eleven artisan stages before reaching its final form. It's a slow, meticulous process rooted in European savoir-faire and French jewelry heritage.
We work with RJC-certified ateliers and produce from over 60% recycled metals, bringing the same attention to material and craft as to form itself.
We are proud to have Mara Paris pieces with clients in more than 85 countries and have been worn by Kendall Jenner, Christy Turlington, Lily Collins, Isabelle Huppert, Cynthia Nixon, Isabella Rossellini, Lady Gaga and many more.
