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Maria Tash (born Maria Tashjian in West Islip, New York) is a jewelry designer, celebrity piercer, and retailer. Tash founded the eponymous MARIA TASH, a New York-based luxury piercing and fine jewelry brand. The brand specializes in body piercing, ear curation, and fine jewelry design. Originally founded in New York City in 1993, Maria Tash has since expanded globally.

Tash's work, under her eponymous brand, has combined elements of mainstream piercing culture with fine jewelry, coining the term “Curated Ear” to refer to an ear pierced with fashionable intention and under the direction of piercing experts.



Early years and education
Maria Tash (birth name Maria Tashjian), originally from West Islip, New York, was born and raised in New York City. Her mother, Rose Tashjian (née: Bakos), emigrated from Kalamata, Greece, to the United States as an infant in 1928, where she would marry Armenian-American Albert Tashjian, an engineer at Lockheed Martin in 1965. Maria Tash attended Columbia University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She also attended King's College in London, England. Her thesis work was done on the theories of fractal cosmology. Barnard College recognized Tash's academic work by awarding her the Henry A. Boorse Prize, an honor given "to a graduating Barnard senior, preferably a major in the department, whose record in physics shows promise of distinction in a scientific career." .

Maria studied at the Juilliard School of Music and would perform at Carnegie Hall, appearing as a background violinist in film productions and as a violinist on several recordings.

Before pursuing a career in jewelry and piercing, she expressed an interest in public service, teaching computer literacy to ex-Soviet refugees.

In 1992, she attended Fakir Musafar’s "Fakir Intensive," an intensive program and master class in piercing and body modification at the Fakir Musafar School of Body Piercing San Francisco, where she honed her trade as a piercer before launching her career.

Career


Tash opened her first studio, Venus Modern Body Art, in 1993 in Manhattan's East Village, specializing in body piercings and jewelry. Venus Body Arts eventually became Venus by Maria Tash when Tash decided to use her name for the shop. While first specializing in navel jewelry, the shop later become known for a variety of ear piercing styles.

Tash launched a line of international stores with its flagship location opening in New York City in 2004. In 2016, the brand began expanding globally with the opening of a shop at Liberty London. Maria Tash has since opened locations in Rome, Dublin, Harrods London, Dubai, Kuwait, Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

In November 2018, she opened her second freestanding location outside New York City with a 2,000 sq. ft luxury boutique in The Dubai Mall.

In 2020, during the Corona-Pandemic, Maria Tash began to offer complimentary virtual appointments through FaceTime and Google Hangouts in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Arabic.

Continuing plans of national and global expansion, MARIA TASH secured a senior secured credit facility in 2022 from Second Avenue Capital Partners, LLC ("SACP"), a unit of SB360 Holdings.

Inventions and innovations


Maria Tash is also an inventor and innovator in jewelry design, mechanisms, and even novel piercings, and holds numerous patents across multiple national jurisdictions. She has patented new types of piercings known as the "Tash Helix" and "Tash Hidden Rook". These novel piercings use placements for the piercing underneath the extrinsic structural cartilage of the outer ear, both the helix and the rook, to hide the wearable components of the jewelry and give the designs the appearance of floating freely on the wearer.

Tash patents relating to jewelry cover both unique design elements and technical mechanisms. Her innovations extend to gemstone cuts with Tash developing novel diamond cuts to support her designs, such as the "silhouette" cut diamond.

Outside of jewelry and design, Maria also holds utility patents, including the virtual “Try-On” tool TASH Studio, a virtual “Try-On” tool, , released in 2023 which uses AI to apply real piercing principles to the simulation. By showing realistic styling and piercing results such as accurate scaling of jewelry, how much gravity sits on a ring, and full 360° rotations of studs, Tash aimed to increase consumer confidence and lower the rate of returned jewelry—with hopes that the software would prove useful for a myriad of jewelry and retail purposes outside of her own company.

Design and cultural impact
Tash modified several industry-standard methods of assembling jewelry to create pieces that better fit the wearer. These include a “threaded” style earring backing and "invisible set" diamonds, which are notched and set below the crown. Tash designs are often smaller and more subtle than the traditional punk-style heavy piercings that were popular in the early 1990s, when Tash began piercing. However, she still borrows from her punk roots to create jewelry that combines modern luxury aesthetics with the punk style. Tash designs with the permanence of piercing in mind, sometimes comparing her work in jewelry with that of the tattoo.

Her designs have been worn by Hailey Bieber, Rihanna, Ashley Graham, Queen Rania, Florence Pugh, Gigi Hadid and Maritta Hallani.

Maria is actively engaged in the cultural life of New York City and is a current member of the board of The Lincoln Center Theater.