Made in Buenos Aires: The Story Behind the Iskin Sisters Atelier

Every Iskin Sisters piece begins the same way: in a workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with hands, tools, and a clear creative vision. We're sisters, we're makers, and we believe the story behind an object matters as much as the object itself. This is ours.

Buenos Aires as Creative Context

Buenos Aires is one of Latin America's great design cities — a place where European modernism, local craft tradition, and a fiercely independent creative culture have mixed for generations. The city's architecture, its graphic identity, its design schools and art galleries: all of it filters into the work we make. Our pieces have an architectural, geometric quality that is very much a product of that environment.

Working from an atelier here also means working within a community of makers, fabricators, and suppliers who understand craft at a granular level. We source our materials locally where possible, work with skilled local craftspeople, and are embedded in a design ecosystem that values precision and originality.

The Materials We Choose

We work primarily in three materials: leather, acrylic, and tubular mesh. Each was chosen deliberately.

Acrylic gives us access to a full spectrum of color and translucency that no other material can match at this scale. It's a modernist material with a clean, graphic quality — it lets us make bold color statements without weight. Our Klee and Yayoi lines, named after artists whose work we deeply admire, make the most of acrylic's color possibilities.

Leather brings warmth and texture to our pieces. It's a material that ages and develops character — perfectly aligned with our Slow Fashion ethos. Our leather pieces have an organic quality that contrasts beautifully with the precision of cut acrylic.

Tubular mesh is one of our newest additions, with a sleek finish that anchors more complex mixed-media pieces. The Life line makes particular use of this material creating 3 dimensional pieces.

What "Handmade" Actually Means

We use the word handmade carefully. In a world where the term is often applied loosely, we want to be specific: our pieces are assembled, and finished by hand in our Buenos Aires atelier. Each one is made individually, not batch-produced. This means slight natural variations exist between pieces — not as flaws, but as evidence of their making. When you hold an Iskin Sisters piece, you are holding something that was made by a specific person, on a specific day, with care and attention.

This is also why we work at a measured pace. We don't rush production to meet trend cycles. We make what we design well, in quantities that we can stand behind, and we release new work when it's ready.

Slow Fashion as a Practice

Slow Fashion isn't a marketing label for us — it's the framework we operate within. It means designing pieces intended to last years, not seasons. It means choosing materials for durability and character, not just cost. It means being honest about how things are made and where. And it means the relationship between maker and buyer is a meaningful one: when you buy from Iskin Sisters, you're supporting a small independent atelier in Buenos Aires, not a supply chain.

Our pieces are sold in museum stores worldwide — institutions whose mission is to connect people with meaningful design and art. We're proud of that context. It's the right place for what we make.

An Ongoing Story

The atelier is always working. New lines emerge from ongoing creative research — from art we encounter, materials we experiment with, and conversations between us about what contemporary jewelry can be. We'll use this space to share more of that process: new work, ideas in progress, and the thinking behind what we make.

In the meantime, explore our current collections: New In, Bauhaus, Klee, and Yayoi.