About Us

LUMERA
 
JEWELRY
 — 
THE
 
BRAND
STORY
“The Light That Stayed On”
As told by Topher, Founder
“The impact is in YOUR story. The jewelry will show your truth.”
This is a story about a gay man who watched a movie, lost friends he could not save, survived
a night that almost took him, and decided — with everything he had left — to build a light so
bright that no one in his community would ever have to find their way in the dark again.
PART ONE: STEEL MAGNOLIAS AND THE MOMENT EVERYTHING
SHIFTED
It started with a movie.
Not a superhero film. Not a blockbuster. A story about women — fierce, funny, heartbroken,
unbreakable women — sitting in a beauty shop in Louisiana, holding each other through the kind
of grief that does not ask permission before it arrives.
Steel Magnolias.
Topher was a gay man sitting alone watching that film, and something in it cracked him open in
the most beautiful way. Because what he saw on that screen was not just a story about women.
It was a story about community. About showing up. About the way love between people — real,
messy, devoted love — is the only thing that makes the unbearable bearable.
He saw himself in every single one of those women.
He saw his community — the LGBTQIA+ family he had built around himself, the ones who
showed up when blood family could not, the ones who called at midnight and stayed until
morning, the ones who loved him in the full, complicated, glorious truth of who he was.
And he felt something ignite inside him. A purpose he had not yet found the words for. A mission
that was forming in the quiet space between who he had been and who he was becoming.
That movie planted a seed.
And that seed became Maggie’s Gurls Foundation.
PART TWO: THE FRIENDS HE COULD NOT SAVE
But purpose, as Topher would come to understand, is rarely born in comfort.
It is born in loss.
In the years that followed, Topher watched friends — beautiful, vibrant, irreplaceable members
of his community — end their lives. One by one. People who laughed loudly and loved deeply
and carried inside them a light that the world had spent years trying to extinguish. People who,
in their darkest moments, could not find the hand reaching out for them in the dark.
Each loss carved something deeper into him.
Each loss asked the same impossible question: What if they had known they were not alone?
What if someone had reached them in time? What if there had been something — a resource, a
conversation, a community — that said: stay. You are needed. You are loved. You matter?
He could not answer those questions for the friends he had already lost.
But he could answer them for the ones still here.
He could answer them for the fifteen-year-old who is just beginning to understand who they are
and is terrified of what that means. For the forty-year-old who has spent decades hiding. For the
person sitting alone tonight, in the dark, asking themselves if there is any reason to stay.
Maggie’s Gurls Foundation was not just named. It was summoned — called into existence by
grief, by love, and by the absolute refusal to lose one more person without a fight.
PART THREE: 2018 — THE NIGHT TOPHER ALMOST DIDN’T
MAKE IT
And then came 2018.
The year the weight became too much even for the man who had made it his life’s work to carry
others.
Topher — who had built a foundation to save lives, who had shown up for his community again
and again, who had turned his pain into purpose — found himself in his own darkness. The kind
that does not announce itself. The kind that arrives quietly and convincingly, and tells you that
the world will be fine without you. Better, even.
He made a choice that night that almost ended everything.
But it did not.
Something kept the light on.
He survived.
And in surviving, he understood something he had known intellectually but now knew in his
bones: this crisis does not discriminate. It does not spare the helpers. It does not skip the
founders. It does not pass over the people who have dedicated their lives to preventing it in
others.
It comes for everyone.
Which means the work is not optional.
Which means Maggie’s Gurls Foundation is not a nice idea — it is a necessity.
And which means that what Topher built next had to be something that reached people not just
in crisis, but every single day. In the ordinary, beautiful, mundane moments of life. In the morning
when they are getting dressed. In the evening when they are going out. In every moment when
they look in the mirror and need to be reminded of who they are.
PART FOUR: DRAG QUEENS WITH PURPOSE — FREEDOM IN
FULL COLOR
Here is something you need to understand about Topher.
He found his freedom in the most spectacular way possible.
Because when Maggie’s Gurls Foundation needed a voice — needed a way to reach the
community, to break through the silence, to make suicide awareness and mental health
education something people would actually stop and listen to — Topher did not send a memo.
He did not post a flyer.
He called the Drag Queens.
Drag Queens with Purpose became the beating, glittering, unapologetic heart of Maggie’s
Gurls Foundation’s outreach. Because who better to carry a message about identity, expression,
and belonging than the people who have made an art form out of becoming exactly who they
are — loudly, beautifully, and without apology?
Drag is not a costume. For the people who live it, drag is liberation. It is the moment when the
person the world tried to make you becomes the canvas for the person you actually are. It is
identity made visible. Expression made undeniable. Belonging made joyful.
And for Topher, watching Drag Queens with Purpose take the stage — watching them deliver
messages of hope and survival and self-worth to audiences who had never heard those
messages delivered with sequins and grace and absolute conviction — something in him was
finally, completely free.
This was the work. This was the purpose that Steel Magnolias had planted in him all those years
ago. This was what it looked like when grief became glory.
PART FIVE: LUMERA — WHEN PURPOSE BECOMES SOMETHING
YOU CAN WEAR
A year after Maggie’s Gurls Foundation found its voice, Topher asked himself a new question.
What if the mission could be carried not just on a stage — but on a body? What if every single
person in the community could wear something that said, every single day, without words: I
know who I am. I am proud of who I am. And I belong here?
What if the jewelry industry — which had spent decades ignoring the LGBTQIA+ community,
offering them nothing that reflected their beauty, their complexity, their full and luminous
humanity — could be disrupted by something built entirely from love?
Lumera Jewelry was born.
Named for lumen — light. Because that is what Topher had learned, through every loss and
every survival and every sequined, triumphant Drag Queen with Purpose performance: the light
does not go out. Not if we protect it. Not if we build things that remind people it is there.
The UNITY Collection — interlocking rings, rainbow infinity pendants, beaded hoops — was
designed to make you feel, the moment you put it on, that you are connected. To yourself. To
your community. To every person who has ever loved you and every person you have yet to
meet who will.
The Phoenix Rising Collection — double triangles, constellation pendants, love knots, feathers
— was designed to remind you of your own mythology. You have been in the fire. You have
risen. That is not a metaphor. That is your actual life.
And with every purchase, 5% of every dollar goes directly to Maggie’s Gurls Foundation —
because wearing Lumera is an act of solidarity. It is a way of saying to every person in your
community who is struggling tonight: I see you. I am with you. You are not alone.
PART SIX: THE CONVERSATION — TWO PEOPLE WHO
RECOGNIZE EACH OTHER
This is the kind of conversation that happens when two people who have been through the fire
find each other. It happens in coffee shops and at Pride parades and in the comments section of
an Instagram post at 2 a.m. It is the conversation Topher has been trying to make possible his
entire life.

Identity is the moment you stop performing the version of yourself the world is comfortable with
and start living the version of yourself that is true. It is terrifying. It is the bravest thing a person
can do. And it is the foundation of everything.
Expression is what happens when identity finds its voice. It is the Drag Queen stepping onto
the stage for the first time. It is the teenager putting on a rainbow pendant before school. It is the
fifty-year-old who finally, after decades, wears something that says this is who I am without
apology or explanation. Expression is identity made visible. It is how we tell the world — and
ourselves — that we are here.
Belonging is the destination. It is what Topher found in Steel Magnolias, in the beauty shop, in
the fierce and devoted love of women who showed up for each other no matter what. It is what
Maggie’s Gurls Foundation fights for every single day. It is what Drag Queens with Purpose
performs into existence on every stage they grace. And it is what every piece of Lumera Jewelry
is designed to give you — the feeling, from the moment you put it on, that you are part of
something. That you are not alone. That you have a family, and they are everywhere, and they
are wearing the same light you are.
It is through identity, expression, and belonging that we truly find ourselves — in ways
that empower us to become that one person we are made to be in this crazy, beautiful
world.
THE PROMISE FROM TOPHER TO YOU
I almost did not make it to 2019.
I want you to know that. Not because I want your sympathy, but because I want you to
understand what it means that you are holding this piece of jewelry right now. That you found us.
That you are here.
I built Lumera because I needed it to exist. Because my community needed it to exist. Because
every person who has ever felt invisible in a world that was not built for them deserves to wear
something that says: you are seen. You are luminous. You belong.
I built Maggie’s Gurls Foundation because I could not save the friends I lost. But I can fight like
hell for the ones still here.
And I built Drag Queens with Purpose because I learned — in the most spectacular, glittering,
joyful way possible — that the most radical act of resistance is to be exactly, unapologetically,
magnificently who you are.
Every piece of Lumera carries all of that.
Every piece carries the memory of the friends I lost. Every piece carries the night I almost did
not survive. Every piece carries the freedom I found on the other side of that darkness. Every
piece carries the hope that you — whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are
carrying tonight — will find your way to that freedom too.
The impact is in YOUR story. The jewelry will show your truth.
With everything I have — Topher Founder, Lumera Jewelry & Maggie’s Gurls Foundation
TAGLINES FOR EVERY PLATFORM
Context Tagline
Brand hero “The impact is in YOUR story. The jewelry will show your truth.”
Origin story “Born from survival. Built for belonging.”
Foundation tie-in “Buy a piece. Save a piece of someone.”
Community “Built by survivors. Worn by warriors.”
Social media “You are not invisible. You are Lumera.”
Pride season “The light in you has always been there. We just made it
something you can wear.”
Resilience “We are the Phoenix. And we are rising.”
Drag Queens with
Purpose
“When purpose wears sequins, the whole world pays attention.”
Identity pillar “Identity is not a trend. It is your birthright.”
For the struggling “To the one reading this at 2 a.m. — you were made for more
than tonight.”
© 2025 Lumera Jewelry. All rights reserved. In proud partnership with Maggie’s Gurls
Foundation & Drag Queens with Purpose. 5% of every purchase supports LGBTQIA+ suicide
awareness, education, and literacy.
“It is through identity, expression, and belonging that we truly find ourselves — in ways that
empower us to become that one person we are made to be in this crazy world.” — Topher,
Founder