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Celebrity stylist Kate Young has created some of the most iconic looks we’ve seen on the red carpet in recent memory, and knows better than anyone how jewelry can provide the perfect finishing touch to a showstopping look. At this year’s SAG Awards, she dressed Selena Gomez in a dazzling Bulgari Serpenti choker. At the BAFTAs, Sienna Miller embodied effortless chic in diamond tassels by Boucheron. And who could forget Margot Robbie in her Van Cleef & Arpels Zip necklace at the 2015 Oscars?
Fortunately, you no longer need a Hollywood star’s bank balance to benefit from this self-confessed jewelry geek’s expertise. The New York-based stylist has drawn on her own enviable collection of vintage baubles to create a collection with Monica Vinader. The hardworking pair of entrepreneurial creatives were introduced by a mutual friend, and got to Zooming during lockdown when the lack of travel and red-carpet events meant they had the time to devote to designing a collection together.
Vinader says she knew it was a match made in heaven from their very first video call. “You said, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m just going to go to my safe.’ And you literally turned around and started showing us your jewelry box with all your amazing collection – your vintage pieces and the things you loved,” Vinader told Young during an exclusive conversation with Vogue.
“I love fashion, but it can be so transient. Things that look important can look really tired a year and half later. Jewelry doesn’t do that,” says Young, who counts Elsa Peretti among her favorite designers. One of the best things about awards season, she says, is seeing the look on the faces of new interns when they unpack a diamond necklace for the first time. “They cannot believe their eyes – there’s a magic in those rocks,” she says with a smile.
Inspiration for the Monica Vinader X Kate Young collection came from a mixture of vintage jewelry, modernist architecture, and sculpture, as well as, of course, fashion. “Currently, I’m really inspired by that sort of early 2000s minimalism, that Donna Karen/Armani-style modernism,” says Young. The result is a sleek, sculptural amalgam of earrings, necklaces, bangles, and rings in high-shine gold vermeil, paired with a striking palette of lemon quartz and black and green onyx. A testament to the timelessness of strong design, Vinader credits her goldsmiths’ expertise with bringing the pair’s vision to life. “Simplicity, it turns out, is complicated!” she says, laughing.
One bangle is a perfectly satisfying seamless curve of gold and black. It can be worn alone or stacked with others. “Wear the bangles in all gold, and they look really minimal, but if you stack them in different colors, they become cool and conceptual,” says Young. The tennis necklaces, meanwhile, inspired by the stylist’s love of paste jewelry, can be layered to create your very own neck mess.
Young has the same encyclopedic knowledge of jewelry that she has of fashion. Obsessed from a young age, she would go straight to the fashion section at the library when her mother took her to storytime sessions. But it was only while working as an assistant at US Vogue in the early 2000s that she started to learn about jewelry, too. She would frequently be sent to pick up pieces for shoots from Fred Leighton, and while there, would soak up knowledge from the store’s Rebecca Selva, its resident expert in antique sparkle. “I would ask her about the pieces in the store and she would tell me about their history, and give me books to go away and learn more,” Young recalls.
That knowledge and passion comes through in the collection, and is what Vinader herself loves best about collaborating with creatives in other fields. “They always push us to try new things and to think about design in a different way,” she says. The result of this particular partnership is one that will benefit all of our wardrobes this autumn.
