Miami designer Elizabeth Buenaventura turns online harassment into EB Connection jewels

Miami designer Elizabeth Buenaventura is using a wave of false online harassment to sharpen the meaning of EB Connection, her fine jewelry line of Bond Studs at $190, Synergy Earrings at $390, Embrace Huggies at $235 and Continuity Earrings at $290. The collection is built around the language of invisible threads, unity, belonging, strength and life’s journey, and that symbolism now lands with unusual force around a designer who found herself pulled into a viral story she says had nothing to do with her.

The trouble started within hours of the June 24 Mexico-versus-Czechia match in Mexico City, when a TikTok showing a woman being doused with beer began circulating and Buenaventura was wrongly identified as the woman in the video. She said she was at home in south Florida and had never been to Mexico City. What followed was immediate and ugly: her phone and social media accounts filled up with hostile messages, and the comments escalated into death threats. She first posted on Instagram to ask her community what was happening, then recorded a clarification video after a follower told her that her account had been tagged in the viral post and that viewers were mistaking her for the blond woman in the clip.

Even after the backlash slowed, Buenaventura said she still does not know how her account became linked to the video. The only possible connection she can trace is a dinner invitation from Cha Cha Cha, a Mexican restaurant in Miami, about two months earlier, where her name had also been tagged. That ambiguity has made the episode feel less like a single online mistake than a reminder of how quickly identity can be flattened, and why Buenaventura has long framed her jewelry as something closer to a talisman than a decoration. Elizabeth Buenaventura Fine Jewelry says the Connection Necklace was inspired by the invisible threads that connect us all, and describes it as a modern amulet symbolizing unity, belonging and life’s journey.

That language is rooted in a brand story Buenaventura has built carefully over time. The label says it is based in New York City and handmade in NYC, with recycled gold used in 95% of its handmade fine jewelry and ethically sourced stones folded into its sustainability pitch. Buenaventura says she was born in Connecticut, raised in Santiago de Chile, lived in New York City for 11 years and now lives in Miami. The brand also says she moved to New York in 2010, launched her fine jewelry line in 2013, won first place in the CASE Awards of Jewelers of America and was a finalist in the Alternative Bridal Engagement 101 contest.

The emphasis on connection was already visible before this summer’s harassment. On Dec. 28, 2024, Buenaventura and Diamond Tales hosted an intimate Miami event centered on storytelling, life’s journeys and deeper connection, a setting that made the line’s emotional vocabulary feel less like marketing than a design philosophy. In EB Connection, the sentiment is built into the metal itself, and that is what gives the collection its weight.