Designers to Watch: Lele Sadoughi

Her Twitter bio simply reads: ‘Lifestyle Brand Focused on Jewelry and Home Décor’. We don’t mean to be pedantic, but we think Lele Sadoughi has sold herself short, there.

Sadoughi (whose real first name is Lisa) first found a passion for jewellery in 2005, when she was living in Ippolita. She started designing custom pieces for huge brands like Anthropologie and Club Monaco. Just a year later, J. Crew approached her to create their first jewellery collection. The rest is history. She was the brands first Jewelry Design Director, and maintained the role for five years, garnering industry acclaim as a successful costume jewelry designer.

But she had her eyes set on another prize. In 2011, the Texan-born designer left J. Crew to hold the jewelry fort at Tory Burch, while planning her own eponymous jewelry collection. In 2012, it arrived, making its debut on Moda Operandi.

The designer draws her inspiration from vintage jewels and a cocktail of travel, romance, boldness and colour. She manages to fuse an easy-to-wear sensibility with specific influences, such as Ancient Egyptian culture and architecture. Brought together with stones and hand-set crystals, and extra unique techniques like hand-printed enamels, her costume pieces receive the praise they rightly deserve. We’re not the only ones to think so. Items from the Lele Sadoughi collection have featured on the cover of every fashion magazine around, from Vogue to W, The New York Times to Elle. Not only that, every major stockist is selling her line, here and Internationally, including Net-a-Porter and Harvey Nichols

Sadoughi has officially hit her target. The line is luxe but affordable, unique but easy to style. From the stone column slider bracelet – reminiscent of dusty, worn temples – with it’s monochrome simplicity, to her drop papyrus earrings in Atlantic blue, oozing exotic feminine glamour, the designer has wielded research, fashion, knowledge and creativity to create a truly breathtaking line.

She once said she wanted to create art. We think that’s mission completed.