Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Fernandez.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Vanessa. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
It all started way back when I was just a little girl. My mother would buy me those beading kits, and she says (because I can’t remember) that I would obsessively sit and bead at about age 5-6. I think I knew I was obsessed with jewelry early on. I remember jewelry advertisements would arrive in the mail, and I would sit down and cut out the photos of Rolex watches and diamond necklaces and tape them on to my self. I remember doing that. I loved feeling all glamed up. It’s pretty hilarious. If I saw my kids doing that now, I’d crack up laughing.
Later on in high school, I started selling little sets of beaded bracelets to friends between classes, I’d only makes a few dollars here and there, nothing serious, but I loved it. Once in my first years of college, I got into more complicated pieces with gold-filled wire and semi-precious stones, wire wrapping techniques, etc. I think it was my second year in college that I needed to take care of an art credit and saw that jewelry making was a course I could take. I enrolled and thus entered the world of metalsmithing, soldering, metal forming, stone setting, etc. I fell into love, literally like the way you fall in love for another person. I remember thinking, what time is it? I would look up at the clock, nearly everyone was gone, I hadn’t eaten, and I was working alone in a complete and utter deep state of “flow.” That is really when I realized this is what I want and need to do with my life.
I was devastated when the next semester, I couldn’t enroll in jewelry again because the program had been cut from the art department. Apparently, there weren’t enough students enrolled in continuing. I freaked out. I searched around the city for classes I could take, I asked private studios, I checked at the local college, I couldn’t find anything.
After about a year, the local community college started to offer jewelry courses, and I took each and every one of them until I reached a level where my professor suggested I leave the state in search of a school that really had an excellent program, and with the help of my aunt, artist Teresita Fernandez, I did just that. I had begun the process of looking at different schools around the country focusing on the east coast, and I had been interested in SCAD, RISD, amongst a few others, but once I took a weekend to travel and visit VCU, my aunt’s alma matter, where she had been asked to come and give a lecture, did I then realize what an amazing school I had the opportunity to apply to. And so I did just that, I applied to VCU school of the arts, put together a portfolio I made in the sculpture studio at the community college (MDC) I was still enrolled in, while still taking courses at (FIU). I applied, and I got in! I was already behind as far as a typical four-year college program is concerned but I didn’t mind. I was finally doing what I wanted to, finally going after my dreams of becoming a professional jeweler, artist, and designer.
After that summer, I packed up my things and moved to Richmond, Virginia and started the intensive jewelry program, along with a few incredible electives, sculpture, glass blowing, glass casting, woodworking, and all sorts of jewelry classes, metal forming, mechanics, stone setting, enamel, the list go on. Once I graduated from VCU, I returned to Miami sort of aimless, not Really knowing where I would head next, I considered grad school but I was a little burnt out after nearly six years of school. I found a job opportunity at manufacture in Doral that handled all the manufacturing for several brands who sold at HSN. I was put in charge of inventory organization, communicating with several factories in China, as well as communicating and facilitating designs and orders from the clients who were selling the product on HSN and some magazines.
I slowly fell into depression realizing that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, I found my self running to the back of the office where there was a decent-sized studio set up for special orders, and when the jeweler who ran the studio had to take a month off of work, I stepped in and filled his shoes. I was in heaven. I remember my bosses father would walk in and tell me I was crazy, that how could I want to be working and laboring away with my lady hands instead of behind a desk typing away, I would just respond by laughing, and he would laugh too like we both knew it was just what I was meant to be doing, and that I didn’t care for a desk job.
I was at that job for a total of one year, when I had the super rare opportunity to meet in person, the creative director of John Hardy Jewelry, a brand you see sold at Neimans, Saks, and many private jewelry salons around the world. They make incredible jewelry, and let me tell you I saw all the back of the house in person. It is all made by hand. It truly is an incredible operation. They are based in Bali, Indonesia. I met the creative director at a rooftop event on Miami Beach, and introduced my self, emailed him my portfolio and boldly asked him for an internship opportunity. He responded a week later, inviting me to the island for three months. I went, and I learned, my mind was blown, aside of the cultural immersion, and just going from Miami to Bali, I had my eyes open. I loved every minute of it and I am eternally grateful Guy Bedarida came into my life and gave me that opportunity to learn.
After three months, I returned home to Miami, and that’s exactly when my then boyfriend and I took a trip to Mexico for a wedding. Its also when he proposed to me. I think subconsciously he felt that becoming his fiancé would keep me grounded and at home, preparing for an upcoming wedding, and I loved him so much I was truly elated when he asked me to marry him.
A few months later, I took a trip to NY to visit my aunt, who I’ve always been close to, she is a mentor to me, she’s always been one of my biggest supporters, she’s always pushed me to be better and to do better. When I was a little girl, she would babysit me several days a week, taking me to her studio, and giving me charcoal and brown paper and say “there draw”, I was little but I loved it. I remember clearly being surrounded by makers of all kinds, welders, flames, hammers. I loved it. While I was in town staying with her, she invited me to join her on a dinner date. I went with her, and had the opportunity to meet Lorenz Baümer, creative director of Louis Vuitton fine jewelry based in Paris. He also happened to be close friends with Guy Bedarida and asked away on how I had experienced being in Bali, and I told him of the incredible experience.
A few days later, I emailed him with my CV and portfolio and new designs I had created since Bali and within days, I was given the incredible opportunity to move to Paris, and I was there for seven months working for Lorenz Baümer, for both his company and Louis Vuitton via his studio. I learned more than I ever imagined I would, these experiences both helped me to become the jeweler I am today. I learned how to properly design, pencil and rotting pen to paper, and all about color and mixing colors and stone rendering and preparing designs and rendering life-like images of diamonds, metal, colored stones. It was pivotal to my growth as a jeweler and designer.
I came home after seven months in Paris to my fiancé, who was this entire time, the most caring, loyal, understanding, and patient man one could ever encounter. Three months later we were married at a beautiful, enormous, destination wedding he had completely organized while I was away. I felt both grateful and blown away. He really is and has always been my rock, my soul mate and one of my biggest supporters.
After the wedding, I took some time off to set up our new home on the beach. It was spectacular but far from the rest of my family, which later was the reason we left the Bal Harbour area and moved to the Coconut Grove area we live in currently. I decided I was going to put together my own collection. I didn’t hold back for anything. I bought gems, diamonds, gold, silver, made models, molds, casts, and multiples. I found a nice venue in the design district and set up the best event to my ability in a way to self promote a night of unique hand made fine jewelry with drinks and gourmet hor d’oeuvres. I had amazing sales that night. I had over 100 guests come in and buy pieces off of me and the staff I had hired and trained to help me sell and package everything.
After the event, I headed to NY and met with several magazines, W, Elle, and Vogue. My pieces came out in Elle, came out in Cultured Magazine, Vanidades, Vogue Japan, amongst several others.
Within a year I was pregnant with my first child, Santiago. I remember going through a rough phase after he was born. I had no idea how hard it would be to balance work and being a full-time mom. Before he was born, I had taken a trip to Tokyo with my husband, which also coincided with a meeting I had set up with Pearl brand Tasaki. I was given a chance to create a very special one of a kind piece with Tasaki and a master laquer artist to create a single piece for a Christie’s auction taking place later that year in Kanasawa. The auction would sell one of a kind pieces with the goal of raising funds for a program that would support local artists and their traditional crafts throughout the country of Japan.
Later that year, I returned (pregnant) for the fundraiser. The pearl cuff I had designed raised fifty thousand dollars. I was dressed in full kimono for the event and it was unforgettable. At the event, I became close to an art curator who invited me to return in a few months for a third time, for a small show she was putting together and so less than a year later, I was back in Japan, but this time Kyoto, having a very small and intimate show, with a six-month-old baby in tow.
After that, I returned home and needed a break. I felt I was burning out with a baby and travel and work. I became pregnant again, this time with a little girl, who we named Paloma.
My husband is a builder and my brother in law an architect and together we bought land and built homes as neighbors.
At this point Santiago was two years old and I put him into daycare, and just at the beginning of this year (2020), Paloma was a year and a half and I put her into daycare, which she spent only one month in, because of Corona Virus. Shortly after at the end of January, my mother passed away from very aggressive breast cancer which she had been battling for years. My son came out of school as well, and I entered a new phase of my life of pain and struggle. I never knew I could handle so much, two babies, the loss of my mother, and a global pandemic, and just when I had started setting up my new studio in the new house, with both kids in daycare. That is life. Sometimes it throws us a curveball.
This year has been the most challenging of my life thus far.
I have started working again, designing and making towards a new collection I plan to unveil later this year or early next year. I also started taking GIA courses this summer, and I will be working my way slowly towards my graduate gemologist degree, something I’ve always wanted. My goals are to create a line of jewelry, thats accessible, creative, unique, chic, elegant, edgy, and fine. A collection that has something for everyone, that has something you want to wear daily but might also wear on a special occasion. I am, at my core, a fine jeweler and I intend to stay that way, but that being said, I also want my jewelry to be accessible, and that’s something I think is a new way of thinking in the fine jewelry world, how to take something thats always been exclusive and making it accessible without jeopardizing the integrity of the material, craft and design. Its something I think about more and more. I also enjoy the challenge of custom work, and welcome it whenever it comes my way.
Has it been a smooth road?
I feel like I addressed this on the previous page, but yes. Dealing with the loss of my mother this year to breast cancer, having to take my kids out of daycare, a global pandemic, burn out as a full-time mom and recently back to work, its never a smooth road!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I am a jeweler in every sense of the word. It’s truly my passion for taking a simple material and forming it into a precious object.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I love Miami, no place is perfect, every city has its positives and negatives, I really look forward to growth in Miami.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vanessa-fernandez.com
- Phone: 3052199015
- Email: vanessa@vanessa-fernandez.com
- Instagram: vanessafernandezstudio
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