Call it Randi Molofsky’s “back to the future” era: The jewelry expert with an exquisite sense for what’s modern and about to trend is now growing a business focused on vintage pieces.

Molofsky is best known within the jewelry industry for her work as a journalist and as the founder of For Future Reference, a brand development agency that serves as a showroom for indie designers. With her new For Future Reference Vintage brand, she shares her personal collection of jewelry and watches dating back to the Victorian, Edwardian, and art deco periods.

Although For Future Reference Vintage is only a year old, it is now available through retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman in New York City, Twist in Seattle, and Department in Nashville. It also recently debuted at Bloomingdale’s in Costa Mesa, Calif.’s South Coast Plaza.

“I always say: Nothing haunts you like the vintage you don’t buy. Especially with unsigned, these are one-offs that you may or may not ever see again,” Molofsky says. “If you fall in love with something, don’t hesitate, because the next something similar you find could cost twice as much.”

A lifelong pursuit of taste, beauty, and sparkly things has brought Molofsky to this new enterprise, one that she says truly tells her story within jewelry. She had no family ties to the professional jewelry world growing up outside Annapolis, Md., though she would study her grandmother’s jewelry box for treasures.

Yet her skills didn’t evolve out of nowhere. Let’s just say that Molofsky was always cool—like, even in elementary school she was setting trends and making her style look effortless, modern, and fresh.

“I always loved accessories,” she says. “According to my mom, when I was about 5, I refused to ever leave the house without wearing a belt, even with bathing suits.… I was also voted ‘Best Dressed’ by my senior class—I think that superlative, paired with my budding journalism career, started to foreshadow what’s to come.”

After working on her high school newspaper, Molofsky pursued journalism in college, attending James Madison University in Virginia. She graduated with honors from its incredible School of Media Arts and Design, with a concentration in print journalism, in 2000.

“I wrote for the school paper and was the youngest-ever editor of a human interest magazine called Curio, teaching me so much about finding great story ideas and the interview process. After graduation, I immediately moved to NYC, hoping to find a gig that would combine both writing and fashion in some way.”

She started interviewing at fashion magazines, but also applied for the fashion editor opening at a title called National Jeweler, then a twice-monthly print publication.

“The editor at the time, Donna Frischknecht, for one reason or another took a chance on me, even though I had zero jewelry experience,” Molofsky says. “Pretty quickly I was thrown straight into the fire—attending trade shows, meeting designers, interviewing retailers, and going on press trips around the world to gemstone mines and jewelry fairs—and I was bitten by the jewelry bug immediately.”

She went freelance in 2003, and two years later was commissioned to write a book called A Girl’s Guide to Buying Diamonds, which capitalized on the recent trend of the “right-hand ring” and jewelry self-purchasing. This compact, illustrated guide to the basics of jewelry provided a gateway to some of her future projects.

Molofsky added public relations consulting to her freelance work, and in 2007 she became the chief curator for Portero, a website that was a forerunner of the online pre-owned boom. She learned about content creation, social media, and secondhand luxury, and got to dig deeper into luxury categories including jewelry, watches, handbags, fashion, and art.

In 2012, she joined Gemfields, the London-based mining and marketing company that was a leading supplier of responsibly sourced rare colored gemstones, as its U.S. director of marketing and communications.

“It all came full-circle: I was working with designers to create one-of-a-kind collections, conceptualizing multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, taking journalists to Africa to learn more about the mining experience, and overseeing all of the PR for the brand in the United States,” Molofsky says.

A move to Los Angeles in 2015 led her to start a blog and work with emerging jewelry brands on PR and marketing. That segued into For Future Reference, which handles both wholesale and public relations for fine jewelry designers.

For Future Reference has been going strong for a decade now, and during that time Molofsky dived into the vintage and pre-owned worlds again. She had been selling vintage jewelry and watches to private clients for years, and she has a strong relationship with an Los Angeles–based family business called Excalibur.

“I wanted to see how we could partner to do something together. So, in 2024, For Future Reference Vintage was born. We decided to focus specifically on unsigned statement pieces that we could curate and bring to retail partners to sell in their stores without having to source it themselves,” Molofsky says.

“Plus, seeing the jewelry worn by luminaries including Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Halle Berry, Serena Williams, Mikey Madison, and more has been a superfun bonus,” she adds.

Top: Randi Molofsky is a veteran jewelry journalist and industry insider who is now curating vintage collections for boutiques and department stores. (Photos courtesy of For Future Reference)

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