It’s a rare sight to find Jessica McCormack in the flesh, through the recently renovated doors of Simon James Store’s Auckland home. After two long years of border closures, the New Zealand-born, London-based jewellery designer can once again set foot inside the exclusive retailer’s light-filled Herne Bay store, complete with a private lounge dedicated to showcasing McCormack’s eponymous jewels.

It’s 10 am on a Friday and beyond the serenity of the softly plastered walls is a sense of tremendous excitement — an almost-childlike exuberance radiating through the length of the otherwise calm, considered and well-curated space. A parcel has just arrived from London, from 7 Carlos Place in Mayfair (McCormack’s five-storey atelier). And it’s filled, unsurprisingly, with diamonds — old mine, pear, carré, and cushion cuts — set in gold of every colour: 18 pure carats of yellow, white and blackened luxury.

“You want to put [your jewellery] on and look at it and be like, ‘Ohhhhh’,” sighs McCormack, gazing lovingly into the flash of a 3-carat cushion diamond, set comfortably in the tie of her brand’s signature 18-carat gold Arbor Knot Bangle. “[My sister, and director of Simon James] Georgina, was like, ‘Wow, have you never seen your own jewellery before?’” the designer laughs as she eagerly reaches to unpack more of her new arrivals. She delicately threads a single cross Gypset hoop through her ear and drapes a gold toggle necklace — heavy with gothic hardware and a diamond pear pendant — around her neck like a prized medal.

“This is the easy part of my job,” McCormack says. “This is the really natural, easy, fun part... you have to enjoy it yourself.” Plus, there are the significant milestones that McCormack gets to witness alongside her clients. “[Jewellery] is just a really special, important part of people’s lives. And I get to be a part of it,” she says, stopping mid-diamond dress-up to grab her phone excitedly. She pulls up a photo she received this morning. It’s her newly engaged colleague — sun-kissed and all smiles with her left hand on display, featuring a Jessica McCormack East-West cushion cut diamond on her ring finger. “I’ve got clients that I met 10 to 15 years ago, and I’ve been through their entire [lives]: engagement, wedding anniversaries, births of their children, 50th birthdays, everything,” she says, beaming with pride.

McCormack’s sister Georgina confirms that when it comes to jewels, nothing much has changed over the years. “Just the other day, we found a photo of me and Jess dressed up in our grandma’s jewels,” she says. “Now we get to do it all over again with Jess’ creations!”

The familial influence has resulted in quite the career for McCormack, who moved to London in 2005 to intern at Sotheby’s famed jewellery department. With the intention of taking after her art and antiques dealer and auctioneer father John McCormack, McCormack was enamoured by the jewellery that passed through Sotheby’s hands — Russian crown jewels, 1920s Cartier and Lalique. She soon took this fascination further and designed a piece that caught the eye of cult icon Rihanna; a Victorian blackened and yellow gold wing adorned with brilliant-cut diamonds — the ‘Wing of Desire’ earring. Inspired by the Greek god Hermes and designed to follow the sweeping contour of the ear, the earring is a perennial piece of McCormack’s extensive jewellery offering. It’s now available in white, yellow and blackened gold, retailing from $17,292.

“That was the first high profile client experience I’d had,” recalls McCormack, adding she was rather attached to the earring and reluctant to part with one of her first designs. It was her business partner and third-generation diamantaire Michael Rosenfeld who reminded her they had a business to run — and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, McCormack counts celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Kravitz, Dakota Fanning and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as both clients and friends. They’re part of the designer’s growing #GypsetGirlGang, a well-heeled global community with a penchant for McCormack’s signature Georgian button back diamond Gypset hoops. With a shared philosophy on “day diamonds” — a term coined by McCormack herself — McCormack is rewriting the rules for fine jewellery, that diamonds should be worn and loved every day. “No special occasion,” she insists, “just life.”

In returning to home soil the designer has reunited with her mother, sisters, and the Pacific Ocean for the first time in two years. After more than 15 years based in London, with husband Dougie and their three children aged four, five and six, McCormack still considers New Zealand home — and you can hear it crystal-clear in her unwavering Kiwi accent. With her three children — who “sound like the Queen” — in tow, McCormack has travelled to Gisborne, Christchurch and Auckland. She has found comfort “living in the sand dunes with the bugs” at Pakiri Beach. “It’s such an otherworldly place,” says McCormack of the coastal spot 90 minutes north of Auckland, where she carried out the campaign shoot for upcoming collection ‘The Lost Boys’.

“Putting models in amongst that landscape was key to capturing the mood we wanted — a little surrealism in a really beautiful, kind of unreal, location.”

Lensed by local duo Veronica Crockford-Pound and Joseph Griffen, the campaign paints a modern, pared- back interpretation of the late ’70s and ’80s cult films Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Lost Boys — ethereal models draped in white cotton and diamonds, gliding through sand dunes webbed with tororaro against a pale blue sky.

McCormack was dreaming up this 17-piece collection for a long time before finally putting pencil to paper. Rewatching Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys ignited the same teenage thrill of the late ’80s — a visual feast of all things punk, rebellion and the supernatural. “I’ve always remembered that fairground where a lot of the film is set — lit up at night or filled with punks in the daytime,” she says. “I love that something really unglamorous, and kind of grotty, can take on a dark, sexy edge. I wanted that with this collection, to play with contrast.”

It’s androgynous in spirit, much like McCormack’s personal style, but with a touch of glitz.

“My wardrobe is fairly relaxed; I’m mostly in jeans and a t-shirt, or a shirt,” she says. “But then I’m always wearing jewellery. Diamonds in the daytime is pretty much my signature look, so there’s always a bit of glamour.”

Words by Courtney Joe. Images supplied.
This feature was originally published in Fashion Quarterly magazine, winter 2022.