From The Lexy Show, Season 9, Episode 19: “Why Sustainable Jewelry Deserves More Attention | Atma Prema”
We’ve spent a lot of time dissecting the environmental sins of fast fashion: the polyester, the sweatshop labor, the overconsumption. These are all important conversations. But along the way, we forgot about the shiny things that take an outfit from a 5 to a 10.
The little necklace you impulsively bought. The cheap ring that turns your finger green after one wear. The pair of earrings you grabbed to hit a free shipping minimum. All these pieces we treat as afterthoughts are actually a massive part of the problem.
When I sat down with Brooklyn Deshea, the founder and designer of Atma Prema, an ethically sourced jewelry brand based in Los Angeles, we got into what sustainable jewelry actually means, where the industry fails, and how Brooklyn built a brand around full traceability, from opal miners in Australia to a women-owned workshop in Thailand to recycled gold manufacturers in downtown LA.
I hope this conversation changes the way we all look at our jewelry boxes. In the best way, not the guilt-spiral way. Promise.
What Is Fast Fashion Jewelry — And Why Is It a Problem?
Here’s something that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime: jewelry is one of the most wasteful corners of the entire fashion industry. We treat it like an afterthought, a little something to toss in the cart at checkout. But those impulse buys add up to a massive environmental and human cost.
Like fast fashion clothing, fast fashion jewelry is designed for rapid turnover. Cheap metals that aren’t responsibly sourced. Synthetic stones that are essentially plastic in disguise. Pieces made in factories with zero transparency about labor conditions. And a product built to look cute for exactly one season before it breaks, tarnishes, or loses its back. Unlike your old jeans, costume jewelry almost never gets donated or recycled. It goes straight to landfill.
Brooklyn put it plainly in our conversation: the core problem is lack of traceability and mass production. “There’s a lot of jewelry brands that get a lot of their stuff made in China and you don’t really know who’s making it. They’re just having so many new pieces come out like every day.” Sound familiar? It’s the same playbook as fast fashion, just shinier.
And Brooklyn knows what she’s talking about beyond jewelry. Before founding Atma Prema, she worked at a nonprofit fighting human trafficking, including labor trafficking. That background isn’t incidental. It’s exactly why traceability is the non-negotiable at the center of everything she builds.
What Does “Sustainable Jewelry” Actually Mean?
The name Atma Prema comes from Sanskrit, where it translates to self-love or, more precisely, love of the highest self. Brooklyn found it while on a two-week yoga retreat in Thailand, on an island literally formed on top of a giant quartz deposit, where rose-colored quartz washed up along the beach. She started collecting it. The name clicked. The brand followed.
But the sourcing story is where it gets real.
Brooklyn works directly with Balinese jewelers she connected with when she first started the brand. She has attended the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase in Arizona, the largest gem and mineral event in the world, where she met Australian opal dealers face to face at the show. She sources recycled gold through a manufacturer in downtown LA. She works with a women-owned workshop in Thailand run by sisters, with sustainability certifications and ethical labor practices she has personally verified. She also works with a manufacturer in Jaipur, India, widely recognized as the gemstone capital of the world and one of the most important centers for colored stone cutting and jewelry manufacturing globally.
“I’m very hands-on,” Brooklyn told me. “I know where everything’s coming from because I’m very hands-on.”
That’s not a marketing line. When a brand founder can walk you through the specific continent, facility, and person behind every material in a piece, that’s the actual definition of a traceable supply chain.
The Sapphire Heirloom Ring: What Intentional Jewelry Actually Looks Like
When I asked Brooklyn which piece means the most to her personally, her answer said everything about the difference between jewelry made with intention and jewelry made to move units.
The sapphire heirloom ring starts with her father. He was, in her words, “basically a hippie” in the seventies: into meditation, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and collecting stones and gems. He collected dark blue sapphires back then, held onto them for decades, and eventually passed them to Brooklyn. She waited until she felt settled enough in her jewelry career to do them justice. Then she had them cut marquee-shaped, turned east to west instead of the traditional north to south, into a signet-style ring that’s both contemporary and deeply personal.
“Now I can show him like, this is what I made,” she said. “People love it. I’ve sold a few. It’s just very meaningful.”
That piece will not end up in a landfill. It will not be worn twice and forgotten. It will not turn anyone’s finger green. It is the physical opposite of every fast fashion jewelry purchase you have ever made and immediately regretted.
How to Shop for Sustainable Jewelry: Red Flags and Green Flags
Based on my conversation with Brooklyn, here’s what actually matters when you’re evaluating a jewelry brand.
Traceability is the starting point. Can the brand tell you where the metals and gemstones came from? Not in a vague “responsibly sourced” way, but specifically. Which country. Which mine or supplier. Who they met with in person. If they can’t answer that, that’s your answer.
Look for certifications, but don’t stop there. Certifications for sustainable practices and ethical labor are a meaningful green flag. But Brooklyn’s deeper point is that a founder who genuinely cares will make that information findable. You shouldn’t have to dig through four pages of a website to locate a sourcing statement.
Know your materials. Gold-plated brass is the cheapest option and the fastest to tarnish. Recycled gold and silver cost more upfront and last indefinitely. The math on cost-per-wear is not close.
Find the human behind the brand. Who started it and why? Is there a real origin story or is it a generic “we care about the planet” page with no specifics? Brooklyn’s background, her manufacturing relationships, her personal sourcing trips to Tucson and Jaipur: all of that is findable because she doesn’t hide it.
Watch for storefronts with no verifiable owner, no traceable contact information, and customer complaints about orders never arriving. Brooklyn mentioned dealing with an AI-generated scam site that had stolen her brand name and was defrauding customers through Facebook ads. If you can’t find a real person behind a jewelry brand, that is your red flag.
Why Your Jewelry Deserves the Same Scrutiny as Your Clothes
Brooklyn said something in our conversation that stuck with me: “We’re talking a lot more about the waste that our clothes are causing, but I don’t feel like we’re talking about the waste that the jewelry we’re buying is causing.”
She’s right. The same logic that applies to fast fashion applies here. Buy less. Buy better. Ask where it came from. Invest in pieces you can tell a story about, the way Brooklyn can trace every sapphire in her father’s ring back to the seventies, the way a piece with real materials and real history becomes something you actually keep, pass down, and build meaning around.
The goal isn’t to have more jewelry. It’s to have jewelry that means something and lasts long enough to prove it.
Listen to the Full Episode of The Lexy Show
The full conversation with Brooklyn goes deep on the founding of Atma Prema, the labor trafficking background that shaped her sourcing standards, and what it actually takes to build an ethical brand in an industry that mostly doesn’t bother.
You can listen to Season 9, Episode 19 of The Lexy Show wherever you get your podcasts. Find Brooklyn and Atma Prema and on Instagram at @atmapremajewelry.
Your jewelry is part of your fashion footprint. And with a little more intention, it can be part of the solution.
If you what you hear, please sign up to my podcast, The Lexy Show; Fashion That Gives a Damn.
