Jennifer Fisher
The New York jewelry designer believes in top-tier makeup, applied sparingly.
Written by LAURA REGENSDORF
Growing up in Montecito, California—a place replete with natural beauty along the Pacific Coast—the jewelry designer Jennifer Fisher didn’t really concern herself with makeup. But she appreciated a glint of metal. Her grandfather was a polo player and silversmith who made bolo ties, belt buckles, and money clips; he’d gift his handcrafted pieces to a roster of polo clients that included Sylvester Stallone and Tommy Lee Jones. Fisher’s own career sent her galloping into the high-profile styling world, so when she had her first baby, she knew how to navigate New York’s Diamond District to create the kind of commemoration she envisioned: a small engraved dog tag that she strung on a heavy gold chain. She made one for Uma Thurman, who later wore it on the cover of Glamour. In a flash, Fisher’s business was off to the races.
Now 55, the jewelry designer is synonymous with everyday statement pieces: layered charms on a necklace, Gothic-letter signet rings, hoops named after influential stylists like Samira Nasr (now editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar) and Karla Welch. Fisher experiments with her own self-presentation. “I used to change my hair color like I changed my socks,” she says. “My husband jokes that he’s had 75 wives over the 25 years we’ve been married.” Lately, though, she’s homed in on the absolute essentials. She underpaints with her friend Sarah Creal’s concealer for subtle sculpting and uses a neutral lip liner, like Bob Beauté’s in Concierge. Eyebrows get special consideration (“They really ground your face”), and a flick of eyeliner sometimes comes into play. If a party calls for extra fanfare, she’ll glue on a few small lash clusters. “That’s my COVID skill,” she says.
As Fisher’s point of view has caught people’s attention, she’s been drawn back into the limelight for her personal style, with its sense of rigor and polished ease. “My makeup drawer to me is like my bonsai garden,” she says of her constant pruning. But even as a beauty minimalist, she’s strategic about touch-ups, with a peripatetic life that flits between an office in the Empire State Building, home in Tribeca, and two shops (Upper East Side and Soho). “I keep my shiny black Violet Grey pouch at my Madison store,” she says—just one of the MacGyver-style kits stashed across town, stocked with the go-tos she shares here in her BAG. “I keep it simple, but I keep it everywhere.”
