On a recent hot summer afternoon, we stopped by jewelry designer Lizzie Fortunato's Chinatown apartment that she shares with her twin sister Kathryn—also her business partner—and a roommate. As soon as we walked in the door, we were hit by not only a refreshing blast of AC, but also with the fact that this had to be one of the coolest, most creative spaces in the city. A two story loft-space with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and ample natural light, it's stocked with souvenirs from Fortunato's plentiful travels, detritus of jewelry projects past, present and future, flea market finds and friends' art. Fortunato recently designed Hope Marian, a collection for Urban Outfitters, and with a peek inside her home, it's easy to see where she gets her inspiration.
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Photographed by Mike Vorrasi
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"I've been making jewelry ever since high school. Then in college, I was wearing necklaces and stuff and girls would come by my dorm room wanting to borrow it, and my sister, who is the total entrepreneur of the two of us, was like "We'll sell it to you!" Before long, our dorm room was a glorified store. Girls were coming in every Saturday afternoon buying necklaces. I would end up signing up for the same classes as my sister every semester and she would do all the work for me and I would be sitting at home making jewelry."
"Our dining room table came from Brimfield's. It's a flea market in the middle of nowhere in these fields in Massachusetts. It happens three times a year in May, July, and September. They have like 500 vendors set up selling everything from arrows to furniture to antique clothing, it's incredible. If you can get your hands on a pick-up truck it's definitely worth going. You need a truck because you'll just want to buy everything."
"A lot of these older books are from the $1 shelf at the Strand. Whenever I am displaying jewelry for buyers to come see, we always use old book bindings. I feel bad because I have a lot of books where the pages have been cut out to be used as displays or whatever."
"Our apartment is an eclectic mix of friends art and just random pictures, trinkets... we do a lot of traveling to source stuff for the jewelry. So whenever we are traveling we try to bring stuff back and get textiles."
"When Kath and I were in India this Spring, we started designing these rompers, like one-piece jumpsuits, one-size-fits all that are priced really well. I think they retail for $110 or something and they're all 100% Indian Silk. They're inspired by this jumpsuit that I found in Austin, Texas for like $5. Then we made the sample and our friends were like "Oh my god these are amazing."
"The Fall/Winter collection in particular was all about heading West, like ditching the city for your Harley, your boyfriend's leather jacket and just going West. The collection was called Long May You Run, but the pieces were all named after towns that I had visited out West or things that reminded me of hitting the road. Growing up we spent a lot of time in Colorado. The cowboy photo was taken by my roommate Kate's brother, Pat Dougherty. We also use some of his photos in our lookbooks."
"After I graduated from college, I came to New York and worked in fashion PR, but friends kept asking me to design stuff for photo shoots or runway shows. It got to a point where I was working 8AM to 8PM at this publicity job and then would come home and make jewelry until four in the morning. I was like 'Hell no I cannot do this anymore,' so I quit my job, then we did like a huge launch party the following spring and it just kind of took off."
"I have been into vintage chandelier pieces for a while and brought that back from Buenos Aires. I was in Argentina and Uruguay, found that at a flea market, so was like the crazy lady on the plane with a chandelier in her lap. They were like 'You can check that,' and I was like 'No, I'm not parting with it.'"
"The line we did for Urban is called Hope Marian. Hope is my maternal grandmother and Marian is my paternal grandmother and they've been extremely influential. My mom's mom is like super chic and she was always the most stylish woman. That purse belonged to her. She was always dressed to the nines and fabulous. Then my dad's mom taught me how to sew, and she made this pillow. We did a line of cross-stich purses a few seasons ago, and she like made all of sketches for me. Her handiwork is phenomenal."
"When I am developing our bigger pieces, I could work on it all night long. Kathryn and I have very different schedules, so it will be five in the morning and I am going to bed and she's getting up for work. I'll leave stuff out with a note that says, "What do you think?" and she'll write "I think it could use a little work," and I'm like "Dude I just stayed up 18 hours straight making this frickin' necklace!" She's the business manager, and I am very dependent on her."
"I'm really into taking textiles and completely re-working them. That's been something that's been a theme. Similarly with the flowers, I am really into to taking different materials and just putting them together in super unexpected ways. Especially these days, when it seems like everyone and their mother and their sister makes jewelry. And so much of it is so good, it's funny. So many of my goods friends are in the apparel and accessories industries and I'm like, "Oh wow, your shit is really good, why am I making jewelry?" So it's been interesting to kind of carve a path that separates you from every other girl making jewelry."
"It's so funny, all my friends want to go to vacation places and go to a resort and relax, or like some place all-inclusive, and I just want to go places with where there's a crazy market involved. All my friends are like,'Oh my god, you're going to have a bring an extra bag to put all your shit in.' Which we inherently had to do when we went to India, because we brought back duffels full of fabric."
"My roommate Kate Dougherty designed this entire bookshelf, and then a few guys came and built everything in a matter of hours and then we stained it. Everyone comes in and thinks that they're antiques that have been salvaged, but it's not nearly that glamorous."
"When we moved in, the loft was just a flat form. None of these walls were here. I originally was looking for a studio space, but I design everything in the middle of the night, when I'm working on a new collection it occurs from 1-6 in the morning. So I was looking for a studio space, and was like 'This is stupid, I don't want to be in the middle of the nowhere and walking home at 5 in the morning.' So when we found this place it just kind of came together."
"This is the original inspiration board for Urban, when I started I was really into this graphic geometric thing. It evolved into all of these geometric patterns and translated into bolts and bright textiles. I was looking at these zig-zag patterns and I was like, 'Okay how do we translate this into a bracelet?' This stuff is really fun. Sometimes I labor over things and they don't ever come together and it takes me days. Sometimes it just comes together. This first collection that we did for Urban was just easy. I got so inspired and then I sat down and made this in like four or five hours, which isn't, all things considered, that bad."
