For the New York jewelry designers and identical twin sisters behind the brand Lizzie Fortunato, a capsule collection with Palm Beach–based fashion designer Julia Amory was bound to happen.
Social media kismet certainly played a role. Amory, whose devoted following tunes in daily to see how the designer is styling her eponymous pieces, often wears personal collections of Lizzie Fortunato baubles. “We received so many messages from our customers asking what Julia was wearing that a collaboration just seemed inevitable,” Lizzie says.
To kick things off, Amory provided a color palette of burgundy, dusty pink, turquoise, and cocoa. “Julia has always gravitated towards our mixed-medium styles that incorporate multiple materials, from flame-worked glass to freshwater pearls to handmade resin to natural stone,” Lizzie says, “And we wanted our collaboration pieces to showcase this combination of unexpected materials.” Case in point: the Neptune Collar, which features an oversized burgundy-hued resin bead from a vendor that does small-batch production in Tibet. Similarly, for the Peach Sands Collar, Lizzie selected the rarer soft peachy-pink hues of spiny oysters. The lengths of the pieces are also deliberately short, to encourage layering.
Amory, like the Fortunato sisters, is a devotee of the “neck mess.” “This sort of stacking is a rule-less type of styling that’s just joyful and individual,” she says. Amory also knows why the pieces will appeal to Southerners, particularly when worn with her more pared-down dupioni silk separates. “The Southern customer is more comfortable with a statement, loves color, and doesn’t shy away from the playfulness of a great stack.”
The collection launches today (October 10) on lizziefortunato.com and juliaamory.com and in Julia Amory’s retail stores in Palm Beach, Charleston, and Southampton, New York.
