Sitting amid the lush cream-and-matte-gold interiors of one of Malvensky’s two newly opened boutiques at Al Habtoor Palace in Downtown Dubai, the brand’s founder and designer Malvina Cservenschi recounts what can only be described as a full-circle moment. She recalls visiting Dubai a decade ago and taking a photograph of herself standing on the hotel’s grand staircase. She sent the image to her mother in London with a simple message: One day, I’ll open a store here. Reflecting on why both the hotel and the city felt like the natural setting for the next chapter of her jewellery brand, Cservenschi explains: “I truly believe that the architecture of this place, and what has been created here, reflects the same values that define Malvensky.” Today that prescient photo is a tangible reminder that, when this woman puts her mind to something, nothing can stop her.
Born in Romania, raised between Bucharest and the deeply traditional countryside of Transylvania, Cservenschi was shaped, in part, by grandparents who believed that idle hands were a form of disrespect to life itself. “It was sort of like being in the army every summer vacation when I would go visit them,” laughs the founder, describing the regimented rhythms of those childhood years — tending gardens, cooking over open fires, washing clothes, feeding animals, learning to sew and crochet when the day’s harder work was done. Sunday was the only reprieve, a lazy afternoon at the lake. It was spartan and, she says, foundational in terms of the importance of hard work.
“From my father I inherited the fascination with business, with making things happen, finding solutions. He used to say: ‘if you want to have a successful business, you have to know how to do everything …to understand every aspect of a business, from sweeping the floor to leading the company, from managing the accounts to serving clients, making deliveries, negotiating with suppliers, solving problems, building a team, and making the toughest decisions.’” From her mother, Cservenschi learned something else entirely: an almost mystical ability to animate a room and give life to things. “She breathes life into any space she enters,” the founder says with quiet reverence. “She is in love with pearls. Every year for my birthday she offers me a string of pearls.” That string, and those summers in Transylvania surrounded by the traditional spiral patterns and rose-flower motifs woven into her grandparents’ carpets, are the seeds from which the Malvensky jewellery house eventually grew.
But the path there was anything but direct.
Breaking News
After graduating with a degree in foreign languages — English, Spanish, French — Cservenschi was essentially on her way to New York to join her family when a friend called with what seemed like a minor detour: an interview at the Romanian National Television for the role of weather presenter. She went, she says, because she had nothing to lose. She had no expectations. She got the job the same day.
What followed was a decade on air that she describes with the kind of wry affection reserved for chapters of life that were necessary but never quite hers. She and her co-presenter, Albertina Ionescu — a blonde and a brunette, yin and yang — became the first weather duo on Romanian television, causing a small sensation. Within 18 months of learning on the job she had lobbied her way up to a presenter position on the 5 o’clock news, then the 10:30pm broadcast. On the side, she would act as a master of ceremonies at galas and events.
Her years as a news anchor at the Romanian National Television gave her the foundation for everything she does today in business — from storytelling, content creation and editing to video production, post-production, news writing, communication, and developing creative campaigns. She learned skills that would end up helping her to grow into a formidable businesswoman: how to run several social media platforms simultaneously, how to produce, direct, and present and most of all how to build relationships and networks that last.
And yet. “As a news presenter I just didn’t feel like I was bringing something to the table, to society. I also wanted my freedom. I wanted to be independent,” says Cservenschi. The moment of clarity arrived, of all places, through a documentary — The Secret — watched in the gap between her two nightly broadcasts. “They asked you: what is it that you really, really, really want? And this question made me think,” she adds. Deep inside the jewellery designer already knew the answer. She just needed to hear it asked aloud.
Seeing Red
The red string came first. It was the building block of the first jewellery pieces Cservenschi ever designed. She added a gold charm — an angel, a heart, a clover, a coin — onto the silk thread. Love. Protection. Luck. Abundance. The four fundamental needs of a human life, rendered in miniature. She slipped one onto the wrist of a dear friend who had everything except love. She watched her friend’s reaction and felt something shift.
“I went to sleep one night and asked out loud: what should I do? When I woke up, I saw the red silk string bracelet I had designed on my wrist and I realised that the answer was right in front of me,” Cservenschi recounts. She opened her laptop that same night, began to research, and the next morning was knocking on the doors of jewellers on Calea Victoriei — Bucharest’s famous thoroughfare — looking for someone to produce her first four pendants. Later, she placed them on a table in the atelier of her close friend, the fashion designer Rhea Costa, and wrote by hand on small envelopes: Make a wish and let it happen. Two customers spotted her in the act and bought them immediately. “That was, I think, the happiest moment of my life,” the jewellery designer says. “Because I felt that I had found my purpose.”
The Malvensky jewellery brand was officially born in 2012, though the soul of it had been forming for decades. Working through her lunch breaks and late into the nights while still presenting the news, Cservenschi diligently made her bracelets, slowly growing the business. She built one of Romania’s first Facebook stores. She designed the packaging, developed and launched a website — nurturing her budding jewellery house slowly and with intention. “Then one day, came a moment when I realised I had to make a choice. If you truly want to excel, you cannot give your best to two life-defining careers at the same time. It wasn’t fair to either television or the business I was building so I quit television,” she shares about the moment she decided to bet on herself.
Today, Malvensky counts more than 20 collections, most of them produced in Romania, with the high-end fine jewellery pieces crafted in Italy and Mumbai. As the brand’s creative director and designer Cservenschi personally comes up with all the collections. She has studied gemology at the GIA and spent time in Dubai learning about the fascinating world of gemstones. She has also toured Italian factories to understand the technical architecture of fine jewellery making. All that hard work has led to prestigious commissions, including becoming an official jewellery supplier of The Royal Romanian House. A distinction that has seen Cservenschi creating pieces for Her Majesty Margareta of Romania and other royal houses around the world.
The success of Malvensky in Europe is embodied by its brick-and-mortar flagship store in the heart of Bucharest. This 1,000-square-metre jewellery palace, which is spread over three floors, was a critical move for Cservenschi. She wanted every Romanian to have the ability to fully experience the homegrown brand, to see the creations up close, and learn about the stories and symbolism behind each design.
The collections themselves are a kind of touchstone, ones that celebrate heritage traditions and symbolism. They are inspired by Romania’s most significant traditional patterns and historical monuments — the Athenaeum, Peleș Castle, Trajan’s Bridge — translated into gold and diamonds. The Romanian spiral. The tree of life. The clover. The wheat stalks. They all have a place in the Malvensky design universe. “My mission is to translate values, symbols, and traditions into gold and diamonds,” Cservenschi says. “To keep alive our roots. Because in order to be true to yourself, you have to stay connected to where you come from.”
Then, the East beckoned.
Finding Home
There is a word that recurs in our conversation about Cservenschi’s relationship with this part of the world: home. Not “market,” not “opportunity,” not even “inspiration” — though it is all of those things too. But it is this sense of feeling at home that emboldened the founder to launch her brand in the UAE. She moved to Dubai in February and despite the regional unrest she had faith in the perseverance and tenacity of the nation. The designer was determined not to let anything stop her from continuing to pursue her dream to grow her brand in Dubai.
“When I went into the desert for three days to shoot the campaign for the collection I created especially for this market many years ago,” Cservenschi recalls, “I felt like time had stopped. There were only the stars above me and all the noise inside my head got very quiet. I feel deeply at home. I feel at home here when I see all the patterned designs, when I hear the music, when I eat the food, when I see the people. I think in another life I used to be from here,” she confesses.
That collection, the Heart of Orient, was the result of Cservenschi’s recognition that the symbols she had grown up with in Transylvania — the arched gate, the spiral, the geometric rosette — were not so different from the motifs she encountered across the Middle East. Harmony, it turns out, does not require sameness. It only requires resonance. “In the desert, in Al Maha, I was looking around and I found exactly the same symbols,” she shares. “There are symbols you can find anywhere in the world with small differences.”
The Heart of Orient collection is part of a larger project the founder calls Journey of Traditions. Designed to celebrate feminine beauty through themes of sensuality, elegance, and mystery, it continues Malvensky’s mission to discover, reinterpret, and celebrate the traditions, folklore, and cultural heritage of civilisations around the world. “I began Journey of Traditions because of my deep fascination with the symbols and motifs of Romanian folklore. From there, the journey naturally continued into the magical and mysterious world of the Orient, a culture rich in beauty, symbolism, and timeless craftsmanship,” she explains.
Cservenschi chose the location of her Dubai boutiques with characteristic precision, resisting the obvious gravity of the mega-malls in favour of spaces that felt, in her word, aligned with local culture. “I have never gone where the crowds were,” she says. “I always look for where the heart of the people is, so they are naturally drawn to the brand.” What she is building in Dubai is not simply a retail presence. The founder plans to host intimate jewellery events for groups of women — evenings where she will explain how a piece is made, how to understand the value of an emerald versus a ruby, how to read a gemstone report, how to find what truly suits a person. It is an education as much as a sale.
Through Line
The thread that runs through all of it — from the red string bracelet first created on a Romanian kitchen table to the diamond-set tiaras photographed against the dunes — is something that the theme of this issue asks us to consider directly: harmony. Not the easy kind, not the kind that simply means the absence of conflict, but the deeper kind that emerges when disparate parts find that they were always, somehow, meant to coexist.
Cservenschi carries it with her — between her father’s rigour and her mother’s beauty, between the television career she left and the business she built, between Romania’s ancient symbols and the Middle East’s living ones, between the woman who once sent a cri du coeur to her mother all those years ago and the woman who now stands beside the counter of her store in the Al Habtoor Palace where that dream has come true.
“Malvensky is proof,” Cservenschi says, “that out of two bracelets and a vision an idea can be built, diligently over time to grow to a point that it is ready to take on Dubai.” She pauses. Outside the boutique, the city hums. “I want people to know that if they have an idea, something new, something they connect with — even if they find that talent later in life — they can do it. If they have the vision, and if they have the courage, anything is possible.”
Senior Editor: Jessica Michault
Photographer: Greg Adamski
Creative Direction and Styling: Daniel Negron
Talent: Malvina Cservenschi
Hair and Makeup: Ivanna
Outfits: Rhea Costa by Andreea Cristina Constantin
Jewellery: Malvensky
Videographer: Alex Suhorucov
Photographer’s Assistant: James Aquillano
Editorial Assistant: Riya Kumar
Assistant to Talent: Claudia Iliescu
July’s – The Harmony Issue – Download Now
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Images: Supplied
