The Devil Wears Ian Charms: Inside The Internet's Favorite Jewelry Brand

Lisa Sahakian breaks down the keys to brand building and carving out a niche in this crowded market.

For Lisa Sahakian and her brand Ian Charms, shitposting is a way of life. It’s a natural language. It’s the oxygen that breathes life into her social media account, and for young people on the internet, it’s what they were raised on. Seen on megastars such as Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, Pete Davidson, Kid Laroi, Lil Nas X, Seth Rogan, and countless others, her jewelry has likely penetrated people’s social media feeds in one way or another. The beaded charms, often containing culturally relevant or timely pop culture references stand out, and her designs have become instantly recognizable in an industry where most jewelry tends to blend in with each other. The brand’s sharp point of view and peculiar tone of voice is a marked trend younger brands have started to take on. For Lisa and Ian Charms, the brand represents the chaotic energy so characterized by modern internet culture: “We’re really not taking anything too seriously, because obviously there are so many horrible and serious things going on, so it’s this nice little escape for people. It's kind of anti-brand in a way. It's like the brand I always wanted and was looking for but just never saw out there,” Lisa said.

Her brand stands in stark contrast to some of the mass corporations we all see; allergic to risk and deathly afraid of negative public sentiment, big brands struggle to find a middle ground between selling their products like normal people and butting into social movements (through which they invariably launder their products). They simply want it all, and their desire to shill merchandise to every living body with a heartbeat leads to some very predictable and generally lame decisions. “It's pretty hard to be in the middle ground. You kind of have to be so ironic and out there that it's like, yeah, you can't cancel me, we're ungovernable, we're canceling ourselves first. Or you have to be super PC and quadruple-check everything and you're still going to offend people. People have gotten upset with me for not posting about something going on in the world on my brand page, and I'm like, go to my personal it's on there. That's not what this is for, that's not the point of this,” she exclaimed. This is a very important point, you cannot and will not please everyone. This is the biggest issue that corporations today simply do not have the wherewithal to come to terms with. Especially corporations that are in the business of selling products that rely on the very fickle public perception of coolness. There is no way that you’re doing anything interesting creatively or artistically if you have to have 100,000 people sign off to make sure that it doesn’t offend people with peg legs. Sure, if you’re Johnson and Johnson and all you sell are band-aids, then I wouldn’t really bother with creating something that speaks to people on a profound level. However, if you are a company that wants to make a large impact on culture with lofty brand campaigns, specifically in fashion, then you need to sharpen your POV and target a segmented audience. Rather than casting your net as wide as possible, aim for the cool kid in NYC and the teens in the rural Oklahoma town will follow suit.

For brands, the internet is a double-edged sword - on the one hand, it has democratized the ability to create an audience. Scrappy, talented posters can rise to the top through grit and determination. However, on the other hand, a lot of brands become beholden to the ever-demanding and plainly exhaustive trend cycles of the internet. The way information moves these days is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Aimé Leon Dore’s Rico shirt was the hottest shit on the block for like 10 minutes until it blew up online and was shortly copied by everyone else. PLMs at fast fashion companies everywhere were chomping at the bit to get the children sewing their clothes to pump out the Rico dupe.

created by @throwingfits

I still love a good lace shirt, it’s the closest a guy can get to dressing slutty, but it goes to show that if you and your brand do not have a legitimately captivating story or point of view, whatever wave or waves you have been riding can easily come crashing down as quickly as they formed. Just as certain fabrics, pieces, or styles go through the trend cycle, so do brands. “There needs to be a purpose to it, even if the purpose is just like a gap in the market. I feel like when you're copying another brand or there's not something specific about yours, or you're kind of dupe-able, it’s very hard to get people on board. You want people to be like, well I actually haven't seen anything like this before. So I think it's like having your own voice, having it be something you're really passionate about. Like if this (Ian Charms) wasn't pop culture-focused, I would not care about it at all. It probably would not have lasted more than 2 weeks. So just finding ways to tie it into your own interests lets you find like-minded people. Ian Charms definitely isn't for everyone, that's for sure. I mean, my own parents are like, what are you posting half the time? But you find these amazing groups of like-minded people, which is great,” Lisa passionately explained. Ian Charms stays laser-focused, choosing to carve out a niche and let their commitment to levity shine through for their audience like a beacon of light leading to greener pastures, far away from the steaming pile of shit that the world projects onto you.

Ian Charms is a very young brand; having been born during the height of the pandemic in 2020, it found success early on, which one could reasonably attribute to its unique ability to create funny content and dope product. “Once we get an idea, we run with it instantly and it's kind of timeless. You know, there was the Barbie stuff last week. And the second I saw it, I was like, oh my god, I don't want to do that because it's gonna be overdone and old,” Lisa said. That part is key, any brand or corporation can meme. It’s how you meme that gets people interested. If all you’re doing is jumping on a trend or slightly altering a played-out format - you are simply the mediocrity that chases after greatness (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde). That’s not to say that brands need to only be creating original meme formats, however, the key is creating timeless content that isn’t stuck to a specific moment or trend. “We’re determined to push it further and further to see how far it goes. Even the fact that we've been making random things, and lately we're like what's actually the worst, dumbest thing we could make, and I was like, a plunger. So it's kind of like quite literally, how far can I shitpost,” Lisa humorously declared.

iancharms

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Although it may be pointless to juxtapose the marketing practices of small, independent brands with that of large multinational corporations, I do still think there are many valuable insights to be gleaned. Brands like Ian Charms who are able to maintain a distinct personality through their branding or copywriting are able to keep a certain layer of authenticity because they simply DO NOT CARE what people think. Rather than trying to pander to every single person on Earth, they create products and content with an artistic purpose that ends up connecting with a lot more people. There are certain brands that you see, like Palace, Jacquemus, Supreme, Stussy, etc… They have smaller followings and yet generate much higher engagement rates on IG than that of massive corporations. Jacquemus has 5 million followers and got 185K likes on this carousel. Vans has 16M followers and can barely crack 50K likes on a carousel if they’re lucky. Why does that discrepancy exist? Why is a brand with 5M followers beating a 16M follower account into the fuckin stratosphere? Ok, you can probably make a reasonable argument that it’s because people often connect more with an eponymous brand connected to a real person. You could also make the argument that there is a layer of exclusivity that might be contributing to Jacquemus’ rabid audience. Not sure you can really make the same case with Stussy whose engagement rate is far higher than the industry average while priced at a fairly inclusive level. I don’t know, maybe I’m complaining about an unsolvable problem but I honestly think that corporate marketing doesn’t have to be lame as fuck lol. Certain companies are able to maintain a level of focus, they create products and produce content that stays true to the niche subcultures that breathe life into the brand. Unfortunately, as certain corporations grow in size, they lose the soul that made them pop in the first place and they produce watered-down bullshit intended to connect with as many people as possible that no one ends up liking. *Sigh* Ironic isn’t it? At least there are people like Lisa and Ian Charms who we can all take a page from.