PHOTOGRAPHED BY RAUL TOVAR / STYLED BY KATE DAVIDSON HUDSON / WRITTEN BY GRETTY GARCIA
Put simply, speaking with Jennifer Fisher is nothing short of incandescent. And though one might recall her airy, almost gossamer-like intonation working in synergistic rhythm alongside her heavily grounded, robust personal ethos, it’s the residual soreness left on one’s face from smiling long after they’ve ended a conversation with the designer that best quantifies her sui generis disposition and effervescent approach to life.
The origin story of the Jennifer Fisher brand is anything but inconspicuous, having been continuously chronicled amid a labyrinth of lengthy cover stories and confessional podcasts since its inception in the mid-2000’s. However, in its most distilled version, its founding reads a little something like this: At age 30, Fisher was diagnosed with a rare desmoid tumor in her chest for which she underwent chemotherapy until it ultimately shrank.
Years later, when she wanted to conceive, she was cautioned against doing so by her doctor, as her condition was affected by the production of estrogen. But after the loss of two surrogate pregnancies, the would-be designer took a break to become pregnant naturally and gave birth to her first child, Shane, in spring 2005. To commemorate the astonishing feat, she sought an equally astonishing, bespoke piece of jewelry. However, when nothing Fisher saw on the market at the time fit the bill, she took matters into her own hands and crafted the ultimate conversation piece—a gilded dog tag engraved with her son’s name, for those of you wondering—a running theme that has since colored the trajectory of her auspicious career.
But, again, that’s just the beginning. Many founders would begin an introductory discussion—or in this case, an interview—at that point, and recount the trials and tribulations they underwent years back. Fisher, however, would much rather subvert the archetypal norm, an approach she’s often successfully employed, by beginning with the here and the now. After all, she was still coming off the heels of the Rihanna news.
“After being on hiatus for how many years now? Six?,” she begins, broaching the subject of the singer’s general MIA-ness since the release of her album Anti in 2016. “And she came out of the gate wearing three pairs of our earrings for the Super Bowl halftime promo. It’s things like that when we’re like, ‘This is what we are meant to be doing.’ And the whole team sees it, and it’s so great for your whole company to kind of be like, ‘This is why we do what we do every day and why we work our asses off.’”
Though from the outside, seminal moments such as these appear to be a dime a dozen for the designer—especially with a stable of clients that includes the likes of Beyoncé, Selena Gomez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zendaya, Adele and Michelle Obama—Fisher’s gratitude prevents them from being lost on her. “It never gets old. And you never take it for granted, because you’re an asshole if you do. Sorry, it could end tomorrow. So it’s one of those things that I think that you have to be eternally grateful every day for these opportunities.”
It never gets old. And you never take it for granted, because you’re an asshole if you do. Sorry, it could end tomorrow. So it’s one of those things that I think that you have to be eternally grateful every day for these opportunities.
And though, in general, it’s much easier to practice that gratitude in the midst of the good, Fisher has found that embracing it even when things go awry has proven to be just as instrumental in propelling her both professionally and personally. “It’s funny. There are times when I’ve lost a lot of things, and there’s a lot of things that have not gone my way. But it’s in all those things that I haven’t won or been a part of or been included in, I think, that have made me that much more determined to make it.”
Jennifer Fisher will tell you herself that she never intended to get into the profession that she did. “I am a jewelry designer by chance, by just the universe aligning me and putting me here.” Her initial embrace of the everyday wearability of minimalist hoop earrings and the uniqueness of customizable charm necklaces—the very products she’d wanted to find on the market when she began her career—also proved to be desired by others.
It’s funny. There are times when I’ve lost a lot of things, and there’s a lot of things that have not gone my way. But it’s in all those things that I haven’t won or been a part of or been included in, I think, that have made me that much more determined to make it.
Thus, it’s this innately personal design philosophy that has ultimately made Fisher a walking ad for cynosure; she leads with intention for herself first and foremost, which, in turn, resonates as ingenious for the masses. And it’s for this reason that her entrepreneurial Midas touch is inextricably linked with her personal coolness factor, which has increased so much over the years that it’s recently opened the doors to myriad other entrepreneurial endeavors. Case in point? What she modestly calls her “healthcare and lifestyle thing”—a capsule collection in collaboration with CB2, the successful creation of proprietary blends of salt available on her site, and a perfume aptly dubbed “My Scent.”
Not dissimilar to her eponymous jewelry line, these other ventures have stemmed from the very gaps that Fisher herself discovered as a consumer. Of her salt line, she muses: “I just decided one day to put my egg avocado toast on Instagram like everybody else was doing. And little did I know that everyone was going to ask me what was the salt and seasoning that was on top of that.” As for her perfume? That, too, culled inspiration from the California native’s own likeness. “Everyone’s always like, ‘What perfume do you wear?’ And I was always saying, ‘It’s a combination of five different things.’ And so that’s when I finally decided to do ‘My Scent,’ during COVID.” Regardless of what the final product looks like, whether it’s a savory condiment or chic marble serving tray, few people intuit the same undertone of appreciation that the influence peddler does: “I’m super grateful that people trust me to give them that information.”
Fisher’s success is not given to hyperbole. In just a matter of years, she has gone from selling customizable, direct-to-consumer fine jewelry to becoming a cultural signifier and purveyor of the zeitgeist. However, this rise to the top also means that she’s faced with making a lot more choices. “The nicest thing about getting to the place that we are now is the ability to say yes to the opportunities that are coming to us,” she confesses. “There’s a lot of other opportunities that are opening up for us in different spaces of design. So I’m very excited for what the future holds. We have some cool things happening.”
The seemingly endless opportunities Fisher will likely continue to juggle down the line as a result of her increased celebrity and venture into the wellness, home and beauty spaces remains elusive—yet the designer appears to be anything but fazed. It’s this sense of poise and self-effacing awareness that makes one think that she is and always has been ahead of her time, and we’re all just catching up. On what she thinks this future will look like for her, she cheekily says: “It looks like a whole lot of fun.”
One of those projects could even be a cookbook with bits of wisdom from Fisher’s own health journey with Hashimoto’s disease. “I’ve always said I don’t want to, but I just got a literary agent, so we’ll see what comes of that,” she playfully muses.
