Delfina Delettrez Celebrates The Opening of Her New London Store

Delfina Delettrez Celebrates The Opening of Her New London Store:

Delfina Delettrez. Photo: Black Frame

Delfina Delettrez, the jewelry designer known for her surreal, imaginative creations, had a lot to celebrate during London Fashion Week. First, and most superficially, she debuted a brand new boyish pixie cut, which earned her one compliment after another as she entered a dinner in her honor for two other — more substantial — achievements: the opening of her second brick and mortar store, and the release of the latest issue of A Magazine, which she guest curated, following in the footsteps of Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Riccardo Tisci and Giambattista Valli, who have all previously put their stamp on the publication.

Delettrez, who's part of the Fendi family, opened her first store in Rome in 2011, and while she can't quite put her finger on why she chose London for her second, she says it just felt right. "I really follow signs and I had such an amazing feeling about London," she told us after the new location's opening celebration. "Here in London are my best retailers, so I see that my creativity is well perceived. I always thought I would open it on Mount Street. There’s a protective aura and it’s very jewelry oriented — I kind of feel that there's a stone energy and a strength in us [jewelry brands] being close together. Also because I’m moving here — everything just sort of connected."

The space was designed by downtown New York-based Rafael de Cárdenas, whom Delettrez worked with on her first store and has known for years. "I love the way he mixes geometries — smoother shapes and sharper shapes — and he has excellent taste color-wise as well," she explained. "He really knew my work because he’s a friend, so we didn’t have to exchange so much; we were already kind of inside each others brains and universes. I believe in human connections, even work-wise. He knew how to translate all of my codes, which are a lot." Delettrez plans to keep the shop feeling alive by changing up the furniture and the art relatively frequently, and wants the asymmetrical space to feel both homey and vibrant.

As if opening a new store wasn't enough work (the finishing touches were completed just hours before its opening celebration), Delettrez said that curating A Magazine was quite an undertaking — though of a very different sort. "I love contrast, and to be here launching a magazine, which is something flat — not flat because of its content, but because of its shape — and something so 3-D as a shop, it was a heavy passage," she said. "It is crazy how a magazine turns out to be three-dimensional when you have it."

The theme of her issue is gold, and its features run the gamut from an experimental mind map designed by de Cárdenas and his team, to an editorial styled with pieces from the Fendi archives and lots of commissioned works of art, including a sketch by Karl Lagerfeld. "I love how everything doesn’t really connect to each other, it’s like a star mapping or a constellation," Delettrez said. "It’s like a voyage to another dimension when you encounter different planets — none of them stick to the other but they all make sense. In a chaos, there is an order."

Check out the interior of the new shop at 109 Mount Street in London by clicking through the gallery below and look out for her issue of A on select newsstands.