Ariana Stern & Gaby Levy

Ariana Stern is a designer based in New York City, working at the intersection of fashion and fine jewelry. She earned her BFA in Fashion Design, with a concentration in Fashion Communications, from Syracuse University. She later completed the Jewelry Design Associates program at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, then worked as a product developer in the Diamond District and as a CAD designer for one of the world's most storied fine jewelry houses.

Gaby Levy brings a different kind of expertise to the brand. She studied photography at Syracuse, with a minor in international relations, and spent years as a producer in advertising, earning some of the industry's most elite awards along the way. When the constant travel and demanding schedule began taking a toll on her health, she made a deliberate shift, staying in the industry she loved but moving in house as a Business Affairs Manager, work that let her keep building without asking her body to pay for it.

Born as identical twins in a set of triplets, Ari likes to say she and Gaby were made for each other. When Gaby was finally diagnosed with POTS, which was the cause of her frequent, random fainting episodes, a doctor advised her to wear a medical ID. With a career in fine jewelry, Ariana found the market bland, hyper-masculine, or impractical for anyone needing more than one alert. So she designed one herself: an 18-karat gold medallion set with a tourmaline for Gaby’s condition, engraved with her information on the back—stylish enough to love, distinctive enough for medics to recognize.

That piece became the seed of Unconditional. What started as one sister solving a problem for the other has become something they’ve built together.

Gaby's conditions are dynamic and invisible, which means most days, no one can see what she's carrying. The bracelet changed that in a way she hadn't expected. It gave her the confidence to move through her days more easily, and something else, too: a quiet kind of credibility, proof of what she'd always known to be true but couldn't always get others to believe. She wants that feeling within reach of anyone who's had to prove an illness no one else can see.

They live in Queens, New York... down the street from each other.