Jennifer Fisher’s Gut Instincts

Jennifer Fisher welcomes me to her newly opened Upper East Side store with an offer of a fresh cup of coffee. As she fiddles with the fancy machine, I glance down at the glass case between us, which — unlike the other marble-framed jewelry displays in this moody, low-lit space — is filled with packaged snacks Fisher curated for their anti-inflammatory properties. “I want people to be able to get a cup of coffee with coconut sugar if they want to, or some seed-oil-free milk. It’s not readily available,” she says. “I want to take care of my customers.”

As we settle into a small booth at the back of the space, I take a beat to take her in: long, shiny curtains of hair, a black, long-sleeved maxi dress, and knee-high, pointed-toe boots. Then there’s the jewelry, flashes of gold all of her own design: a charm necklace, a pair of bracelets, a smattering of rings. Altogether, it’s a little glam gothic — Morticia Addams by way of Tribeca.

The new store is one small part of Fisher’s very, very big plans. Now, 20 years into her business, with both of her children out of the house and in college, Fisher is in empire-building mode. “It’s a different clientele up here,” Fisher says as we watch passersby admire her window displays. Her SoHo location, which opened in 2022, sports bright white interiors and attracts a chattier, more fashion-jewelry-focused customer. Uptown, they’re more decisive, more interested in fine jewelry — including the 18-karat gold line she’s particularly focused on at the moment. Her Beverly Hills store is moving to a new location — “Next to Erewhon, which is where you want to be in L.A.,” she says — and will look much like this one when it opens ahead of the holidays: awash in sultry browns, lights kept low. It’s 10 a.m., but it feels like we’re winding down at a hotel bar — an ambiance almost out of step with the go-getter energy Fisher exudes in conversation.

“I’m over 50. And I think there’s a lot of women in their 50s looking for some people that are like ‘I’m not afraid to put it out there,’” she says. “Your life is not over. Your life is just starting. This is a perfect time for you to go out and do something. Stop being afraid. Stop caring about what other people think. Go out there and just f*cking do it."

“Stop caring about what other people think. Go out there and just f*cking do it.”

She’s got a lot more in the pipeline, including a men’s line, home accessories, and beanies (the hat is her winter staple). But the biggest development might be her entry into the food and wellness space. This year, she launched Maedyn, her lifestyle media brand, which itself is an outgrowth of her personal Instagram, where she’s become increasingly front-facing in recent years. A new anti-inflammatory cookbook, Trust Your Gut, offers a taste of what readers can expect to find in its culinary content, and she already has a line of flavored salts (with plans for coffee beans next and an eye on condiments). “There’s a lot to do, and so I’m trying to be methodical,” she says. “This is this big evolution for us as a brand — the new look, the new jewelry, the new things that are coming in home and lifestyle.” The ultimate goal? “World domination,” she says, joking. I think.

Her health journey has always been intertwined with her business. In the early aughts, she was working as a stylist for TV, film, and commercials, when she was diagnosed at age 30 with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease. Then, she discovered a desmoid tumor in her chest, for which she underwent rounds of chemotherapy. Meanwhile, she had a drawn-out fertility struggle, during which she tried in vitro fertilization (IVF) to no avail and saw a surrogate twice undergo pregnancy loss, before she finally conceived naturally. (She carried the baby against the wishes of her doctor, who feared the estrogen would reawaken the tumor, which she still lives with. Thankfully, that didn’t come to pass.) When she finally gave birth to her son, Shane, she understandably felt a need to commemorate the occasion, but was unsatisfied with the options on the market. So she went up to New York’s Diamond District and found a jeweler to realize her vision: a gilt dog tag engraved with his name, hung from a matching chain. Co-workers began to ask her about it and eventually requested versions for themselves. Soon enough, she had an order from Uma Thurman, who went on to wear hers on the cover of Glamour. From there, her business took off, and Fisher became a trailblazer in the custom, direct-to-consumer fine jewelry space.

The designs have evolved along with her. From her very first necklace, she’s always been designing for herself — and yet, she’s always left space for the client’s taste with an emphasis on personalization. “I don’t think it’s up to us to choose people’s motifs for what’s meaningful to them,” she says. “Let people do it themselves.” Even her hoops — which have become a staple of the brand since Harper’s Bazaar now-editor-in-chief Samira Nasr asked her to design a pair in 2016 — come in a wide variety of thicknesses and sizes. A single, timeless shape, dozens of variations. Something for everyone. “I didn’t create or invent the hoop earring. It’s been around for centuries. We just happened to create a lightweight, comfortable hoop at a time that people were looking for some really clean options that were comfortable,” she says. “I decided to make every single shape and style of that hoop to make sure that we were known for it.” It worked: She’s been nicknamed “The Queen of Hoops.”

Fisher was pleased to see her longtime ethos echoed on the Paris runways this fall. From headphone bling to bag charms, we’re in a moment of individualization — a backlash, perhaps, to the sameness of algorithmically driven aesthetics and mass production. Gone are the days when there was a singular style of jeans in vogue, when everyone and their mom could wear the same bandage dress and still come off as fashionable. It’s about the mixing and matching, the tucking and the (un)buttoning. And Fisher is perfectly positioned to bejewel the moment.

She’s most proud of sticking around — across two decades, her business has had its ups and downs. “There’s a lot of friends when I started that aren’t around anymore and didn’t make it,” she says. She had a moment to exhale in 2012, when she was a finalist for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, an experience she likens to sorority-rushing the magazine. “I’ll never forget when I walked into that room, and I was wearing this white Tom Ford suit. Anna said to me, ‘Good job.’ I almost fell over,” she says, almost wistfully, before snapping back to the present: “It’s like that was in the Dark Ages — a long time ago.”

“Anna said to me, ‘Good job.’ I almost fell over.”

Today’s fashion world bears only a passing resemblance to the glamour and eminence of that captured in The Devil Wears Prada. But it’s in the new order that Fisher’s thrived. An early adopter of Instagram, she ran the brand account herself for more than a decade, and only recently turned it over to her staff, “so we can grow, and it can be less of me drunk with friends posting a margarita at a bar randomly,” she says. “We need to be a little more buttoned-up when it comes to the brand. I’m free on Maedyn, which is my food account, and Jennifer Fisher, which is my personal account.”

Fisher only started leaning into front-facing-camera content a few years ago. She wanted to generate buzz for her collaboration with CB2, which launched amid COVID, just in time to ride the Great Redecoration wave. From there, she began sharing more and more of herself — her health-conscious recipes, her morning mantras, her family. (Her husband, Kevin Fisher, has been intimately involved in her businesses: “We didn’t get divorced, which is great,” she says of the nine and a half years he worked at the jewelry brand.) She made a point to respond to followers’ DMs, happy to share her recommendations for everything from New York restaurants to brow aestheticians.

“It’s more fun to be honest and put yourself out there. I don’t gatekeep about plastic surgery,” she says. She rolls her eyes at celebrities who’ve only just gotten candid about their procedures. “I’ve been talking about this sh*t for years. I’m literally like, ‘This is who does my Botox. This is who did my facelift. This is who did my eyes. This is who does my teeth. None of this is real.’” (For those eager to hear her recs, she helpfully outlined her “team” in a Sept. 20 Instagram post.)

Her audience ate this content up like a piece of her Mom’s Da Bomb banana bread, which encouraged her to create Maedyn (formerly Jennifer Fisher Kitchen, but no longer: “I didn’t want to put my name on anything else. Enough.”). The newly launched site has the feel of an old-school blog: a home for her recipes, along with her fashion recommendations and “what’s in my bag” reveals. But rather than traditional written posts, her entries take the form of professionally produced videos — the current currency of the content realm.

Fisher always had a sense that she’d be good on camera; during her Fashion Fund days, Vogue editor Mark Holgate told her as much. And she probably could’ve become a reality star if she wanted. She once met with the producers of The Real Housewives of New York to discuss joining the cast. “I would not do it. And nothing against it because I’ve got friends on the show. It’s just not for me, not for where I am right now,” she says. “Also, I would be the villain. I would drink too much and say something completely inappropriate.”

Opening your life up to the public has other drawbacks. Fisher is unbothered by negative comments — “I am a grown woman with two grown children, and it’s OK for people to not like you” — but a recent incident forced her to reconsider some privacy boundaries. An overeager customer “sent a picture of my son in the airport, saying, ‘I wanted to go up to him and say something, but I didn't,’” she says. “It gives you pause.” She takes a breath. “It’s hard. People want to see your kids, and so you want to share, and it’s just part of what we do.”

“I am a grown woman with two grown children, and it’s OK for people to not like you.”

She’d be more open to other forms of unscripted entertainment, like a hosting gig or a show focused on women’s entrepreneurship. (Producers: Ball’s in your court!) But for now, she’s happy to just mess around on TikTok and Instagram. A sense of play is important to her. “I want to be really clear: I’m not trying to be a food influencer; I’m not trying to be a chef,” she says. “This to me, is really, really exciting because it’s being able to really truly be yourself and show people what you love and what I love to do. And I love to cook. People are like, ‘When are you going to come out with shoes and handbags?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. This is really fun. This is what I want to be doing. This is my passion.’” Another jewel in her crown — or charm in her necklace.

If there’s one thing Fisher’s learned in her 20 years in business, it’s not to emulate others just for the sake of it. Repeatedly, I ask her to name her role models or peers whose work she admires — and the response is always that she doesn’t think about them. Doesn’t compare. Doesn’t have time to look around. “No one is better than anyone else. It’s just we’re all doing things for different people, and there’s space for everybody,” she says. “And you don’t have to like me. That’s OK. There’s a lot of people that will.”