Fashion stylist Isabel Bonner debuted her first collection of jewelry, under the banner Isabel Bonner Studio, in 2018—and is part of a mounting wave of apparel designers and fashion stylists who’ve turned to creating jewelry.

The highest-profile example of this trend is top fashion stylist Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert, who was named creative director for Swarovski last year and has since debuted her first collection. But the list also includes former fashion designer Diva Pittala, who recently debuted a jewelry collection called Dust, and Sophie Buhai, the former co-creative director of buzzy womenswear label Vena Cava who now makes jewelry under her own name. 

Why is the fashion flock flying to jewelry? Presumably they recognize that jewelry is, generally speaking, a more stable and predictable business than fashion, with a less demanding pace. Fine jewelry’s rising profile on Instagram, TikTok, and among the celebrity set makes entering the industry a more exciting prospect.

There’s also the potential now—where there really wasn’t before—for jewelry designers to become bona fide names on their own, outside of Tiffany & Co. and the like. Biggie fashion magazines (including Vogue) and influencer feeds with huge followings regularly fawn over jewelry designers, and feature jewelry as prominently as apparel. Again, even five years ago this was not the case. 

Jewelry is so red-hot in 2021, it could be argued that indie designers—names including Harwell Godfrey’s Lauren Godfrey, Johnny Nelson, Bea Bongiasca, Marla Aaron, and Ariana Boussard-Reifel—are fashion’s brightest new stars.

Bonner, who splits her time between London and her native New York City, says she was drawn to jewelry for its slower pace. And she trained in jewelry design, having studied it at the iconic London fashion academy Central Saint Martins. After graduating, she pursued a career as a stylist, but eventually rounded back to jewelry “due to the slower nature of this type of creation,” she tells JCK. “With the jewelry, unlike the styling, I work on ideas for months. There’s a research phase, a drawing phase, a wax model phase, and then sample production. The final step is telling the story and communicating it to others. So you have a lot more time to spend on a concept and a piece’s creation.”

Bonner’s fashion background and savvy styling eye clearly inform her jewelry collection, which is full of mostly metal pieces that effect tiny sculptures, incorporating pearls and petrified woods. Her designs are the kind of cerebral, subtly sexy pieces fashion hounds clamor for. “I’m always envisioning what I would wear with the piece, or who I see them on, so the two are very closely tied,” Bonner adds.

The designer is perennially inspired by modernist furniture and the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, and Walter De Maria. And both modernist and brutalist aesthetics coexist in her work. Bonner says she’s drawn to the iconic movements because of their ability to communicate “striking emotion…through something so simple and direct. There is elegance in these forms.”

The designer notes that jewelry “can often be more personal than clothing” and has the power to “elevate any outfit.” Still, Bonner likes that jewelry is a choice, not a necessity, likes clothes. “There’s nothing utilitarian about it. Jewelry is purely for decoration.” Which, presumably, renders creating it a pure passion.

Top: Cosima earrings, $450; Isabel Bonner Studio (all photos courtesy of Isabel Bonner Studio)

Follow Emili Vesilind on Instagram: @emilivesilind