For his seasonal campaigns, Eddie Borgo skips the traditional model route. The jeweler has a long history of tapping fashion world insiders for his spots, beginning with Vanessa Traina and cycling through muses like stylists Giovanna Battaglia and Kate Lanphear before arriving at this season’s face, debuting here: stylist and shoe designer Tabitha Simmons.
“When I was thinking about the Fall collection, when I started to design it, I was pulling all these references from old Gucci shows and Tom Ford at YSL—there was this idea of jewelry to vamp up an outfit, to make it sexier, to give it a dark, broody feel. She very much has those types of qualities in her, Tabitha,” Borgo explains. “She has this understanding of English tradition and English style, but she also has that romantic sensibility, which lends itself to a gothic sensibility. She was very much part of the type of woman I was thinking about when I was drawing Fall.”
To create the campaign,Cheap Ferragamo Sunglasses, he reunited the team who has worked with him on those that came before it: stylist Keegan Singh (who cut his teeth as Simmons’ assistant early in his career), photographer Paul Maffi, and art director Prim Chuensumran, a veteran of V.
In an age of street-style stars and editors eclipsing models, is the nod to an industry insider deliberate? (Admittedly, Simmons began her career as a model, walking for Balenciaga in the nineties.) “There’s not a specific plan behind it,” Borgo shrugged, “other than, I started my career working with stylists. I have an affinity with them. I understand how they work and respect them a lot. Some of the very first pieces I made were for Camilla Nickerson, or for Karl Templer, that then became part of my brand’s language. These are people in my life that I work with, that I respect and admire. They’re lovers of fashion, which I think is really important. They’re also real women, working women. Tabitha is really empowering and inspiring in that way.”
—Matthew Schneier
Photos: Paul Maffi / Courtesy of Eddie Borgo