Rising designer Christopher John Rogers talks to L'Officiel about his grandmother's penchant for jewellery, and styling the latest Tiffany collection with his muse Alek Wek.

Christopher John Rogers is fashion&#39;s new&nbsp;king of colour. A fashion designer on a meteoric rise,&nbsp;he has become a favorite of influential women from Michelle Obama, Rihanna, Cardi B,and most recently, <a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/fashion/vma-2020-from-lady-gaga-to-ariana-grande-see-the-best-looks-of-the-historic-event">Lady Gaga at the VMAs,</a> for his use of bright hues and his unabashed love of glamour. His vibrant,&nbsp;over-the-top runway shows have attracted&nbsp;significant public&nbsp;attention, and he was <a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/fashion/the-cfda-2020-award-winners-are-the-most-diverse-cast-yet">recently named 2020&#39;s&nbsp;American Emerging Designer of the Year by the CFDA.</a>&nbsp;

L&#39;Officiel scouted the globe for the best up-and-coming fashion designers and&nbsp;asked each of them to interpret jewellery collections from&nbsp;iconic American jeweller Tiffany &amp; Co.&nbsp;With Rogers&#39; modern vision and&nbsp;love for&nbsp;glamour, we knew he had to be a part of this special collaboration. We visited Roger&#39;s&nbsp;design studio in New York City&#39;s Soho, where film director Lisa Immordino Vreeland captured him styling supermodel Alek Wek&nbsp;for his fall collection, paired with&nbsp;yellow diamonds and&nbsp;the latest&nbsp;Tiffany T1 collection.

Alongside&nbsp;Angel Chen&nbsp;and Antonin Tron of Atlein, Rogers&nbsp;interprets the timeless elegance of Tiffany jewellery. Read ahead and meet this emerging talent - and to see his vision of modern glamour come to life.

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Lisa Immordino Vreeland: When did you first realize you wanted to be a designer?

Christopher John Rogers: When I was in elementary school. My friends and I used to draw comic books and make little characters all the time.&nbsp;

I started to investigate what clothing and costume could mean for a character and their personality, and how it could imbue them with some new powers they didn&#39;t have before. That&#39;s when I started thinking about fashion as a medium for expression.

After that moment, I started going on YouTube and looking up old fashion shows. McQueen shows from the 90s and early 2000s, and John Galliano. I got really enraptured with the idea of creating a world and performing theater. Really creating entire fantasies, not just&nbsp;clothes.

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Is there a woman you have in mind as a&nbsp;reference point?&nbsp;

I think the women or the people that I always reference end up being my closest friends, who are always their own person.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s really about a person who mixes and matches different things, who isn&#39;t beholden to one type of aesthetic or reference, and who creates their own world&mdash;not to impress anyone, but solely because they enjoy the journey of getting dressed.

You have to be super self-assured to feel comfortable in these clothes. I also hope that even if you aren&#39;t, the clothes can help you muster that within yourself.

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You clearly love colour. What does colour mean to you?

Colour is the way that I see the world, more than any specific reference, any decade, or type of garment, or silhouette.&nbsp;

It&#39;s a way to make people feel happy. It&#39;s what has always made me feel happy. My fifth grade school picture was me in head-to-toe yellow, which looking back, was hilarious. And my mom was like, &quot;I don&#39;t know what you&#39;re wearing.&quot;&nbsp;

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What is your personal relationship with jewellery like?&nbsp;

My grandmother had a ton of jewellery and she definitely loved it, loved it, loved it. She always dressed monochromatically and presented herself&nbsp;head-to-toe in one colour, so whether it was costume jewellery that was red that matched her red suit, or it was diamonds that she wore with an all-white ensemble, it was really for her, and all about self-expression and not really taking it too seriously. That aesthetic and that point of view has manifested itself into the work that I do.

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How was working with Alek Wek on this project? What kind of story are you telling together?

Alek is one of my top inspirations. Whenever I think of high glam and high fashion, I think of Alek. And that&rsquo;s definitely something that we&rsquo;re all about here at CJR:&nbsp;self-expression, taking up space, and being glamorous wherever you go. So whether it is a black tie event or you&rsquo;re just walking down the street to grab a carton of milk, fashioning yourself in a way that allows you to be most yourself.&nbsp;

Get to Know Christopher John Rogers, The CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year

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