Whether you’re a Bravoholic or not, odds are you know The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Meredith Marks’ designs. Her jewelry has been worn by the likes of Rihanna, Courteney Cox and Chelsea Handler and she’s been expanding her beloved namesake brand (and popular Salt Lake City boutique) with accessories, clothing and coming soon — a coffee product and a bath line.
For the Bravo-obsessed, you know and love her as a cast member of the Salt Lake City Housewives franchise. Over her three seasons on the show, viewers have seen a peek into her business, with cameras filming campaign shoots, fashion shows and more. But GRAZIA USA caught up with the reality star on how it all began — from launching her brand to signing up for the show and what it’s done for her business. Get to know the real Marks, below (and yes, there’s RHOSLC season 3 talk, too!).
Fans of the Bravo show know that Marks has her law degree (and it comes in handy many times throughout the series) and also got a joint business school degree. But when she realized she “loved the law in theory much more than in practice,” her entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and she started a Pilates studio in her native Chicago. It turned into a full-scale health club but one frightening incident changed everything.
“One morning, I was mugged after I dropped my oldest son off at school, walking in what you think would be a very safe neighborhood, and I was dragged across the street. It was pretty aggressive,” Marks shares with GRAZIA USA. “So I realized at that moment that I wasn’t really doing what I was passionate about, and that jewelry was my passion.”
Marks sold “everything off” with her health club as well as real estate development projects she was working on to focus solely on jewelry. “I studied at the GIA [The Gemological Institute of America], and dove in head first, and just did it.”
She credits her love of jewelry to her mother and great-grandmother. “My great-grandmother had this museum-quality amethyst ring. When I was young, my mom had several pieces from Marina B, one of which was a pair of earrings where you could change out the color of the gemstone drop on the bottom. And I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life. That really was my inspiration to creating the versatility that I put into my collection, so I owe a lot to my mother and to my great-grandmother. They loved jewelry, and they created that passion in me.”
Marks even recalls walking to Neiman Marcus while studying at Northwestern and browsing the jewelry department during lunch. “I’d just have fun and look and enjoy. It’s just always been my passion. It’s always been my love,” she says.
Launching a line in 2009 during the recession was no easy feat, but it inspired some of Marks’ most beloved pieces like the first one she ever created (and still makes today), the Mary Teardrop Earrings. “People wanted statement pieces, but they didn’t want to put in [a lot of] money, so I incorporated negative space into my designs to try to give some substance and size to it.”
Later, she filled in pieces with stones or metal, but the real key to her process has to do with three things: function, versatility and creating stone-centric designs.
“The Magnifique collection that I just launched has a magnifying glass in the center so that I can read the menu in the restaurant, which has become a little more challenging at my age now,” she says with a laugh of the functionality elements. She creates two-sided pieces and patented a clasp called the Kristina Clasp for maximum versatility in her jewelry.
“Sometimes I find a stone that I fall in love with, and I create a design around that,” she adds about her process. “I did a whole collection after a pattern I saw on the floor of the Sistine Chapel, and I did another collection on a piece of foliage that I picked up on a hiking trail. Inspiration’s everywhere, and that’s how I design. It’s just with everything around me, whether it’s function, versatility, or just being inspired from the things I see.”
Now 12 years in, she’s expanded with a fashion line with more affordable price-points as an alternative to the fine jewelry line. Plus, she now offers outerwear and accessories as well. “We’re really working on creating a full lifestyle brand. Coffee is definitely in the works,” Marks assures. “That’s been a little challenging with the supply chain, especially because I’m trying to tie that back to women’s causes. I really want to use a farm that is predominantly woman-run, so adding that factor with supply chain issues makes it a little bit more complicated.”
She’s also expanding her spa collection, which yes, will include bath products (for anyone who doesn’t know, Marks loves a bath tub moment). “We had started with some robes and some eye masks, and now, we’re going to get into some other beauty things and a bath like collection, haircare and a candle collab. I’m very busy, and I’m trying very hard to get it all out there.”
One way getting her name out there has changed in a huge way was by joining the cast of the brand-new city in the Bravo franchise which premiered in 2020. “It kind of, fortunately, shifted the whole focus of my business, because pre-COVID, we were really very much event-based,” she explains. “I would throw luncheons or parties all over the world with my jewelry, and people would come and shop, or just learn about the brand. And then COVID hit, and obviously, that was not going to happen anymore. So I was fortunate, because the exposure through the show really allowed me to pivot to [sell] more online. Because even selling in stores, they were all closed. That was definitely a blessing and a saving grace from the show.”
Fortunately it worked out for Marks, because she admits she really didn’t know what she got herself into by joining the show. “I’ll be totally honest, I had never watched Housewives,” she says. “I did watch one episode from every franchise about a month before we started filming, but I never watched a full season, which was definitely a mistake. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like it’s best not to be watching, because I think it sort of jades your outlook and your view and the way you do things.”
While she had “no clue” what she signed up for, she would do it all again. “I mean, you have your ups and your downs, and if you catch me on a down day, I might have been like, ‘no,’ but it’s an experience that most people don’t get a chance to do,” she explains. “In my view, it was a vehicle that I could use to drive my business and to drive attention to the charitable endeavors that I’ve worked on. There are things I love about the show, and there are things I don’t love so much. And at the end of the day, you have to take the bad with the good. Overall, I think it is positive. I think that I have been able to get a lot of messages out there that I feel are very important. If you can help one person by shedding light on an experience or an issue that can make me feel not so alone, that, to me, is huge.”
This season, she gets to promote the ADR Foundation, founded by her sister and nephew, which supports mental health and addiction. Marks threw a fashion show to raise awareness, which she called her “absolute favorite moment” of the season.
As for the most challenging part of season 3, she says it was dealing with castmates who added meaning to her words. “Both Whitney [Rose] and Lisa [Barlow] imputed meaning into my words that just wasn’t there, and they keep saying, ‘Well, your intentions are.’ No, I know what my intentions are, and you don’t. You’re not inside my head. I mean what I say. It was very tough to go through and just feel like somebody else is telling you what you think, what you feel, what you’re saying when they’re wrong.”
As for her changing friendships this season she knows fans are having “trouble getting their head around” how she reconciled with Jen Shah and she hasn’t with Barlow (following Barlow’s hot mic moment in season 2), but says “hopefully, that’s much more flushed out at reunion.”
“But the bottom line is, Jen and I had a lot of moments and a lot of things that we connected on, and she also was very open about what the issues were. And Lisa just kept saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong, there’s no problem.’ But yet, all year, maybe even 18 months leading up to her tantrum, I kept asking her, ‘What was wrong? Why are you so hostile towards me?’ And she kept saying, ‘It’s not me, it’s you. You’re hostile.’ And ‘We’re good, we’re good, we’re good.’ And obviously, we were not good. So it was a little hard for me to reconcile that, and she still won’t really give me anything of substance there. So then I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s move on and just take it at face value.’ She chose to take certain actions that I have a feeling will be revealed at reunion. But I don’t know if they will or won’t; I don’t control [editing].”
She says fans can expect “a lot of unexpected twists and turns” at the reunion but thinks “some of it will be very much what’s expected.”
Adding, “It’s just interesting. It’s human perception. And this show is like a study on human behavior because we all have our own interpretations of our actions, and then you see how other people interpret them, and probably something in the middle is what’s right, you know?”
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season 3 finale airs Jan. 11 at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
