about Mecca

Mo.Na. Gems began in a college dorm kitchen. Mecca McDonald had been making and selling friendship bracelets since she was twelve, and when she saw people online making resin jewelry, she wondered if it could be done without plastic. She spent the summer before her junior year experimenting, then found a starch based, compostable material with a few peers and started turning it into jewelry for her local community.

She’s been building ever since! Mecca studied science, psychology, and economics at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship and received the Eugene Leake Award for outstanding artistic achievement. After graduating, she moved the brand to New York. Today Mo.Na. Gems is fashion first, made from a potato based biomaterial and built to question what things are made of. Mecca designs every collection and writes, directs, and shoots the photos and films that build the brand’s world. Her work has been commissioned by Coach (Coachtopia), Starbucks, YouTube, Nature Valley, and Instagram’s @design page, and her designs and storytelling have built an audience of about 366,000 across Instagram and TikTok. She has raised more than $150,000 in non-dilutive funding, including through the  Reddit Founder's 776 Climate Fellowship, to keep building.