Photos: The X Factor: The CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalists
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh1/10The Elder Statesman
Malibu may not seem an obvious base for designer Greg Chait (with model Raquel Zimmermann), who started out in 2007 with heavy-gauge cashmere blankets. But the Arizona native, who now uses the fabric for his California-feel bajas, beanies, and intarsia sweaters, believes the beachfront city is right for that very reason: “Having distance from a fashion capital helps me keep a sense of naïveté.” His wanderlust contributes, too. The 34-year-old sources buffalo horn for eyeglasses from Germany and raw yarns from Mongolia. Then there’s the label’s lofty appellation, which was once his late brother’s nickname. “It holds everything I do to a high standard,” says Chait. “How things are made, how we treat people: That’s all part of luxury.”
Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh2/10Tabitha Simmons
Alexander McQueen and Dolce Gabbana stylist Tabitha Simmons, 39, admits to having “always loved the shoe side of things. I’m fascinated by how it defines and alters the silhouette.” Having none-too-fond memories of being ushered off to school in unsightly clogs, Simmons founded her namesake line of footwear in 2009 as a chance to create quirky shoes with personality, like her signatures, a cricket-stripe woven-silk-and-linen espadrille and a vertiginous floral-print sandal with corseted heels. The mother of two, who lives with her photographer husband, Craig McDean, in New York, says her day job plays a counterintuitive role in the creative process. “As a stylist, I’m looking for new trends. With my shoes, I want to do the opposite and make pieces with longevity.”
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh3/10Jennifer Fisher
To mark the 2005 birth of her son, Shane, Jennifer Fisher, 41, stamped his name on a 14K-gold tag and hung it around her neck on a long, hefty chain. Friends, acquaintances, even strangers eagerly asked for their own, and “business sort of snowballed,” she recalls of her serendipitous start. “I was soon taking orders over the phone in my bedroom and shipping all over the world.” What resonates with her fans (Rihanna, Solange Knowles, Naomi Watts) is the personal nature of her bijoux, like calligraphic-initial diamond rings and engraved pendants. Fisher’s grandmother never removed an L-shaped diamond charm ring, and her silversmith grandfather created gritty rodeo buckles and bolo ties, which provides insight into the New York–based jeweler’s aesthetic, not to mention her nonreverential approach to fine- and base-metal adornment alike.
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh4/10Jennifer Meyer
“My formal jewelry training started and ended when I was six,” says Jennifer Meyer, 35, laughing. The L.A.-based designer remembers the first cloisonné pendants she crafted at the kitchen table and fired in her artist grandmother’s kiln. It wasn’t until 2005, at the suggestion of her actor husband, Tobey Maguire, that she revisited the art of bijouterie, designing a delicate 18K-gold leaf necklace that was anything but half-baked. Her latest pieces cast a rainbow of color over gold, with turquoise-and-lapis pyramid earrings and opal rings that conjure inky clouds of green and red. “I love it when people tell me, ‘I never take your jewelry off. I sleep in it,’” says Meyer, a mother of two, who herself wears her precious stones alongside charm necklaces made by her five-year-old daughter, Ruby. “That’s the way it should be, a part of you.”
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh5/10Giulietta
There’s always a touch of magic about Federico Fellini’s movies, none more potent than his spellbinding leading ladies, with whom Sofia Sizzi has a special kinship, naming her line Giulietta after the revered filmmaker’s Juliet of the Spirits and her mother’s childhood nickname. “I always have Southern Italian women as a reference,” says the 34-year-old Florentine-born designer, who cut her teeth at Gucci before moving in 2000 to New York, where she worked for Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. Sizzi takes traditional silhouettes—A-line skirts, long-sleeved tops, and tea-length dresses—onto a modern landscape. “The essence of Giulietta is about classic and timeless shapes,” explains Sizzi, who channeled the eccentric style of Peggy Guggenheim and the goddess-like proportions of Sophia Loren for spring. “It’s a language that’s been lost in time.”