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As the official organisers of New York Fashion Week, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) doesn’t typically allow jewellery brands on the official calendar. But CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists are strongly encouraged to show. This is how jewellery designer Presley Oldham wound up on the Spring/Summer 2025 schedule.
Oldham is using the opportunity to flesh out and build his brand’s world — not just with jewellery, but with custom clothes (he used to work in costumes) and shoes (in collaboration with the Portuguese Association of Footwear, Components, Leather Goods and Related Industries, known as Apiccaps).
The looks are chill and beachy: a light, almost pastel backdrop on which the jewellery is placed and draped. There’s lots of skin — Oldham leans into the natural, the jewellery pieces and accompanying looks are informed by the stones and pearls with which he works. “Everything merged, and it became this sort of beachy casual, you were laying on the beach on your clothes; threw it on; everything’s wrinkled in a beautiful and intentional way — but you still look hot as hell, and you’re rolling out in these beautiful sandals with these silk clothes and jewellery that’s impeccable.”
It’s Oldham’s first show, but his brand has been building momentum since 2020. His pearly creations are a fashion insider favourite; he strings together pearls of all shapes in purples, blues and greens, as well as classic whites. He also works with glassware and other stones. Oldham grew his following — and his business — through Instagram during the pandemic and is now stocked in Austin’s ByGeorge, Tokyo’s Deuxieme Classe and New York vintage haunt James Veloria — as well as the Museum of Arts and Design.
Showing up on the runway is a chance to show off his designs in the context of a full look. The clothing won’t be for sale, and Oldham has no plans to launch ready-to-wear. These shoes aren’t available to sell either, but both Oldham and Apiccaps director Paulo Gonçalves say that they anticipate they’ll collaborate on a collection for sale down the line. But for now, these added elements serve the sole purpose of providing a “canvas” for Oldham’s jewellery, as he puts it.
This lens is a new one for the brand and gives Oldham the opportunity to offer viewers more context. “I really wanted to make the most of the opportunity and show the jewellery on models because jewellery designers don’t normally get an opportunity to show at fashion week or to really show on models,” Oldham says. “In keeping with that, I really wanted to show the breadth of my work and embrace the one-of-a-kind showpieces as well as my commercial pieces that I’m known for, that are reproducible that would be for sale in a traditional structure.”
But putting on a show is no mean feat. To do so, Oldham is leaning on both his community and fashion players who are keen to work with and help out emerging New York talent.
Down to the shoes
One such organisation is Apiccaps. The manufacturer works with designers to draw attention to the Portuguese footwear industry and encourage brands not already operating in the region to look to the southwestern European country as a manufacturing partner. In June, the organisation worked with London-based designer Bianca Saunders on a capsule collection for the brand’s SS25 menswear show.
The team reached out to Oldham in the summer and proposed a collaboration. “Young designers always have a very fresh vision. They have new concepts, new proposals. For us, it’s a win-win strategy,” Apiccaps’s Gonçalves says. “We can offer new solutions to young designers (or to markets), and they bring us a new vision and a new approach.” After studying Oldham’s brand, he said, it felt like it fit the bill. “It’s fresh, new ideas and in a very relevant market for us,” he says.
Apiccaps matched Presley Oldham with designer Fatima Oliveira of Mariano Shoes. “When I make a match, I need to know the companies well,” Gonçalves says. For the Presley Oldham collab, it was about finding the right partner that makes men’s and women’s shoes, sandals and heels options. The timeframe was short (just a few weeks), so the designer couldn’t produce new shoes from scratch. For now, Oldham worked with designer Oliveira to tweak existing styles.
What drew Oldham to Apiccaps is the value the organisation places on craftsmanship. “That is something that I value in my day-to-day work, particularly with the show I’m producing. It’s using a lot of handcraft that’s a little bit lost in time and showing it in new ways,” he says. “I’m using a lot of antique beaded flowers from the 1940s and assembling them in new ways. Even the technique I use has been used for rosary chains for thousands of years, but I’ve codified it in my own sense for my brand.”
The community support Apiccaps offers is also a draw for Oldham. “They’re really supporting the industry, which is something that is very admirable and that I think we should bring to our country,” he says. The government support that Apiccaps offers is lacking in the US, he says. “The respect that that endows throughout everyone’s brains, it becomes part of the community and the country in a different way where it feels supported.”
Pulling it together
The shoes are just one piece of the puzzle. But the ethos of the collaboration feeds into the other moving pieces that enabled the show to happen.
The day before the show, I visited Oldham in the apartment he’s subletting while in town for fashion week (he usually lives upstate, in Hudson). It’s in full studio mode: jewellery lining the windowsills; a rack of clothes to the side of the room; boxes of shoes piled up on the floor; and beads galore.
Oldham’s friends are helping out, and midway through our chat, his uncle, designer Todd Oldham, arrives to help out with the fittings scheduled later that day. It’s a family affair – much like the show itself. Many of the cast are friends of Oldham’s, and if they’re not dear friends, they’ve worked with the brand before. The collection integrates his grandmother’s beaded flowers. His dad helped make the debut rings. It’s this makeshift approach that enabled him to pull off the show.
As did some larger partnerships. Oldham is showing at Boom, courtesy of fashion-favourite hotel The Standard. “We’re honoured to play a small part in amplifying the work of talented young designers,” CEO Amber Asher told Vogue Business last year.
For Oldham, it’s a big deal. “I’ve never had something come to life at this scale,” he says. “With jewellery, something that’s so fine, so small — it’s really amazing to get to realise it on such a large scale. I want to grow the world.”
The collection centres around sprouting and growth. “That came about very organically and was influenced by the materials, but it’s also mirrored in the reality of what I’m doing: I am growing, my brand is growing. All of this is evolving.”
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