Life & Work with Elizabeth McIlwee of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth McIlwee.

Hi Elizabeth, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Elizabeth McIlwee, founder of MRBL, a design-led brand reimagining the objects that live closest to us. Sitting at the intersection of beauty and interiors, MRBL begins with the Marble Hairbrush, an everyday object transformed through natural marble stone.

The idea started with a contradiction in my own home. I had spent an enormous amount of thought, time, and money renovating my own bathroom, considering everything from the stone to the fixtures, yet the objects I reached for every morning were the least considered things in the room. My hairbrush, toothbrush, and everyday essentials were things I wanted to put away.

I remember looking around and thinking: why should the objects in our hands feel any less considered than the rooms around them?

That question became MRBL.

I have always been drawn to interiors, materials, and the way objects can change how a space feels. Around the same time, I had committed to posting design content every day. Through the repetition, I started to notice a pattern in my own taste. Marble kept appearing. I was fascinated by its permanence, its variation, its history, and the fact that no two pieces could ever be exactly the same. My audience was responding to it, too.

In a way, consistency became a form of creative research. It helped me recognize the world I wanted to build before I fully understood what the product would be.

I began developing MRBL in the summer of 2025 and launched in September 2026. The Marble Hairbrush became the first expression of the brand: something deeply familiar reconsidered through material, weight, and design.

MRBL is ultimately about beautiful objects designed for everyday moments. Objects that make us a little more aware of the rituals we perform without thinking. Objects worth seeing, using, keeping, and living with.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The greatest challenge has been building something without a prescribed next step.

I was accustomed to environments where there was always a framework: an assignment, a deadline, an expectation, someone telling you what came next. Building MRBL meant becoming comfortable with not knowing.

I had to learn how to move from an idea to an object, and then from an object to a brand. Manufacturing, packaging, logistics, creative direction, marketing, fulfillment. Every answer seemed to reveal another question.

Packaging was one of the most unexpectedly challenging parts. I quickly realized that when you are creating a highly considered object, the experience cannot begin and end with the product itself. The proportions of a box, the texture of paper, the typography, the way the object is revealed when it is opened, all of it contributes to how someone understands the brand.

Then there is the challenge of introducing something unfamiliar to the world. A marble hairbrush is not something people have an existing reference point for. Social media has been invaluable in helping me tell that story.

I have learned that building a brand rarely feels like having all the answers. More often, it is having enough conviction to take the next step before the rest of the path is visible.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
MRBL exists between categories.

It is not simply a beauty brand, and it is not simply an interiors brand. I am interested in the space between the two: the intimate objects we touch every day that also become part of the rooms we live in.

The Marble Hairbrush captures that tension perfectly. A hairbrush is personal, utilitarian, and repetitive. Marble is ancient, architectural, weighty, and enduring. Bringing those two worlds together is precisely the point.

Our first Marble Hairbrush is made with natural Calacatta Viola marble, so every piece carries its own veining, movement, and character. It is designed to function beautifully, but it is also an object you do not feel compelled to hide in a drawer.

That distinction is at the heart of MRBL.

I am fascinated by the idea that beauty can exist within utility. We give enormous consideration to countertops, furniture, lighting, and art, while many of the objects we physically interact with most are made to be inexpensive, temporary, and easily replaced. MRBL asks what happens when we give those objects the same attention.

The brand is rooted in intentional living, natural materials, permanence, and a slower relationship with the things we own. Our phrase, Objects Worth the Weight, speaks to both the literal presence of stone and the larger philosophy behind it.

What I am most proud of is much simpler: I made something real.

I have always loved creating. There is a particular satisfaction in starting with nothing more than an idea and eventually being able to hold the result in your hands. Developing the Marble Hairbrush gave me that feeling on a scale I had never experienced before.

There was once an object I could see clearly in my head but could not find anywhere in the world. Now it exists.

That has been the most rewarding part of building MRBL, and it has only made me more excited about what comes next.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Persistence without certainty.

For years, I knew I wanted to create something of my own. What I could not identify was exactly what that something was.

I explored different creative directions, followed different interests, made things, changed my mind, and kept looking. For a long time, I interpreted that uncertainty as not having found the answer yet. Looking back, the searching was the work.

One of the most consequential things I did was also one of the simplest. I promised myself I would post twice a day, every day.

There was no grand strategy behind it at first. I simply wanted to become more disciplined about creating. But repetition has a way of revealing what genuinely interests you. I started noticing the subjects I returned to without forcing them. Marble was one of them. The more I explored it, the more fascinated I became, and the more my audience responded.

That consistency eventually gave me clarity.

I think there is a tendency to believe successful founders begin with a singular idea they pursue relentlessly. My experience was different. My persistence was not in refusing to give up on one idea. It was in refusing to give up on the process of finding it.

Had I waited until I knew exactly what I wanted to create before I began creating, MRBL probably would not exist.

Sometimes you find the idea by continuing to show up long enough for it to find you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mrblgoods.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mrblgoods
• Other: https://instagram.com/lizmcilwee