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Mejuri Promised Affordable Luxury. Then the Jewellery Giant Lost Its Shine

Scratching the surface of a retail empire built on dainty chains and cutesy charms

IT STARTED IN March 2020, when Teen Vogue reported that Selena Gomez sported a pair of earrings from Mejuri, the Canadian jewellery brand. A fan probably couldn’t buy the bedazzled League of Legends T-shirt Gomez was wearing—it was from Louis Vuitton and cost $2,070 (US)—but they could get the hoops, which clocked in at an eminently reasonable $70 (US). Seven months later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez donned a Mejuri necklace in a photo shoot with Vanity Fair. Then, Billie Eilish appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert decked out in a pair of drop earrings, some stackable rings, and a gold chain with five pearl beads from Mejuri. It snowballed from there.

In August 2025, Vogue ran an article titled “A Running List of Every Celebrity Wearing Mejuri.” It included Taylor Swift wearing the “Heirloom Ring in Garnet” ($698) at a Kansas City Chiefs game; Meghan Markle wearing the “Chunky Huggie Hoops” ($98) at a red-carpet event; and Gigi Hadid wearing the “Bold Pearl Drop Earrings” ($98) at Paris Fashion Week (these prices have increased in the intervening year).

Mejuri’s genius is that it is perfectly perched at the intersection of aspiration and attainability. Perusing the store, one is liable to find small gems set in simple metal bands, minimalist earrings and rings, and petite charms on delicate chains—the kind of nondescript jewellery you can wear to the office and keep on during Pilates. Its products are made from precious metals and gems but cost a fraction of what might be found at heritage jewellers. At Mejuri, you can purchase a simple gold ring for under $200, while you would be lucky to find a gold ring at Cartier or Tiffany & Co.’s for under $2,000. Most of Mejuri’s pieces are priced in the low three digits and land in the ballpark of a sweet little splurge for the gainfully employed or a humble staple for the moneyed elite.

Mejuri was founded in 2013 in Toronto by a husband-and-wife team, Majed Masad and Noura Sakkijha, but Sakkijha serves as the company’s face. She alone stars on the “About Us” page of the Mejuri website and handles all the interviews. (The only interview with Masad I could locate appears in Mejuri’s Substack, and it’s not about the company but fatherhood.) This makes sense, because Mejuri markets itself as a feminist company. In almost every interview, Sakkijha drops the line “Buy yourself the damn diamond.” It is a tongue-in-cheek repartee to the antiquated notion that jewellery is something that men buy for women. Au contraire, Mejuri insists, women have wallets too. Sakkijha has proclaimed that one of Mejuri’s goals is “to democratize the industry.” Presumably, Mejuri does this by selling diamonds not only to rich and powerful men but also to us, ladies of the petite bourgeoisie. Its business and marketing strategy paid off. Mejuri reportedly made $1 million (US) in revenue in 2017, and by 2018, it was growing annually by 400 percent. In 2019, Sakkijha wrote an essay for Glamour about fundraising an additional $23 million for the company while pregnant with twins.

Business skyrocketed during the pandemic as shopping moved increasingly online, and Mejuri raked in a reported $160 million to $170 million (US) in 2023 (the company declined to confirm revenue). Today, Mejuri has more than sixty stores worldwide. It is, per Forbes, “A Masterclass In Disrupting The Jewelry Industry, On A Global Scale,” and has “Changed the Way You Buy Bling,” according to the Toronto Star. Refinery29 once praised Mejuri for “Redefining the Jewellery Business.” Indeed, the brand has not just thrived. It has invented a new genre of jewellery: “affordable luxury.”

Is it really possible to democratize diamonds and stay solvent as a company? According to Glossy, Mejuri was not profitable in 2023; the company declined to comment on whether that remains the case. Unprofitability doesn’t necessarily raise a red flag if a company is in a “growth phase.” But there are other signs of trouble. The segment of the market that Mejuri has helped to define is getting more crowded day by day. It is often difficult to distinguish Mejuri from its competitors. If you were looking for chunky hoops, you could get the “Dôme Huggies” at Mejuri ($158), but you could also get the “Mini Dome Earrings” at Aurate ($140) or the “Savi Dome Mini Hoop Earrings” at Missoma ($189). Canny shoppers observe that one could even get similar jewellery from Quince for a third of the price, or from Alibaba for even less.

Meanwhile disgruntled customers have taken to the internet, complaining that Mejuri pieces break easily and that it is incredibly difficult to get refunds. (In a written comment to The Walrus, Mejuri said, “We take all customer feedback seriously,” but that “a handful of online comments aren’t representative of the experience of the millions of customers.”) Another common grievance is that many Mejuri pieces are hollow—they are shiny things with nothing inside. Could it be that Mejuri’s promises have always been too good to be true? And if so, what does the fact that we believed them say about us?

MASAD AND SAKKIJHA developed Mejuri as a business school project. Initially, they sought to disrupt the jewellery industry by crowdsourcing designs. Designers submitted sketches that customers could vote on, and Mejuri produced the designs with the most votes. The idea won Toronto Metropolitan........

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