My Story

I grew up on the beaches of Santa Catarina, in the south of Brazil, collecting seashells with my mother and sister and turning them into my first necklaces — long before I understood what that was the beginning of.

At fifteen, I moved to São Paulo to model, chosen by the very first agency I walked into. Four years of travel followed — Milan, Mexico, Korea, and further into Asia — before a booked ticket to Hong Kong turned into something longer. Hong Kong became home for eleven years: the rest of my modeling career, marriage, and eventually the decision to stop and study.

I enrolled at the Gemological Institute of America, earning my Graduate Gemologist diploma in diamonds, colored stones, and jewelry design. From there, I joined King Fook, a traditional Hong Kong jewelry house, starting as an intern and working my way to in-house designer — the only foreigner among three hundred employees. I moved through nearly every department, not just design — quality control, manufacturing, marketing, events. Howard Yeung gave me that first opportunity; his brother, Kin Yeung, gave me something else — the understanding that jewelry isn't just metal and stone. It has to mean something, or it isn't finished. My biggest project there was a collection in 999.9% pure gold, inspired by Chinese history and mysticism, seen through my own outsider's eye. It was also there that I first proposed titanium to the management team — a material fine jewelry wasn't really using yet. Nothing came of it then. The idea stayed with me anyway.

Three years in, I moved to Florence to study at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School — two years, full-time, learning every part of the craft from concept to fabrication. I finished at the end of July 2019, thirty-three years old, with nothing but an idea and a material I couldn't stop thinking about.

Gi by Giselle was born that September, in a small atelier tucked inside a courtyard just outside Florence's historical center — close enough that I still get everywhere by bicycle, to my suppliers, to the people who help me make each piece. I had a plan and enough savings to try it properly — but no team, no guarantee, nothing certain beyond the material I couldn't stop thinking about and the nerve to actually begin. Then the world shut down. The emptiness scared me too — but I took it as an opportunity instead. Months of prototypes, trials, and failures I didn't have to explain to anyone — developing my own techniques, my own way of coloring titanium, my own way of working. It took two years before I showed any of it beyond my own circle and the suppliers who'd watched it come together — not because I was hiding, but because I wasn't ready to call it finished. Somewhere in that stretch, without planning it, I found the thing that still runs through every piece — jewelry that follows the body, drawn to the curves nobody else seemed to notice. Nine years later, I'm still here. It was never just metal. It had to mean something. Now it does.