How Being a Middle Child Shaped an Actress’s Style
Issa Rae prefers attire with “symmetry” and avoids flashy clothes. Plus: vintage Ralph Lauren and the sudden end of a cult brand.
“I just like things to be balanced, to be even on both sides,” Issa Rae said on a call this month. “Being a middle child, right in the middle of five, I always wanted things to be fair.”
This desire for balance has informed her personal style. Ms. Rae, 39, an actress and producer in Los Angeles, gravitates toward attire that gives her a sense of “symmetry,” she said, and doesn’t put too much thought into getting dressed. She avoids “extravagant, showy clothes,” she added, and feels most comfortable in casual pieces like jeans and Converse sneakers.
When she wants to look more glamorous, she turns to jewelry.
“Jewelry is my dress-up,” said Ms. Rae, who had her big break as the creator and star of the HBO series “Insecure.”
“I remember one of my first beauty compliments my mom gave me was that I have nice décolletage,” she continued. “So now I like having a necklace there to accentuate it. It makes me feel beautiful.”
Ms. Rae’s taste in jewelry is reflected in the collection of accessories she recently developed with Cast, a brand in the Bay Area. The pieces have simple, linear shapes that meld with her uncomplicated approach to style. Some are inlaid with lab-grown diamond and onyx accents that make them sparkle. Prices start at $250 for sterling silver hoops and creep past $5,000 for jewelry made with 14-karat gold.
Ms. Rae’s goal was to create “pieces that you can go to the office with in the morning that transition into nightwear,” she said. Before working on the line, she added, “I didn’t know much about the creation of jewelry or have the language to describe it.”
She credited Cast’s founders, Rachel Skelly and Eric Ryan, with bringing her up to speed. “I had great translators,” as Ms. Rae put it. Ms. Skelly and Mr. Ryan, who founded Cast in 2019, said they approached Ms. Rae through a mutual friend to collaborate after she had worn their brand’s baubles to red-carpet events like the Emmy Awards.
Ms. Rae’s jewelry collection, called Braeve, is one of a few recent endeavors through which she has engaged with the fashion world. This month, she attended runway shows for Cos and Off-White. And in August, she appeared in her first fashion campaign as a face of the shoe brand Stuart Weitzman.
Ms. Rae’s Cast collaboration and Stuart Weitzman campaign were not her only firsts this year: She just wrapped the first film she has produced without also acting in it. “It’s the first time I’m completely behind the scenes from start to finish,” Ms. Rae said of the still-untitled movie, which stars SZA and Keke Palmer and is set for a January release.
Shop Talk: Vintage Ralph Lauren and Wearable Art
Art You Can Wear
“Residual Energies,” a group show at Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami on view through Oct. 19, mixes sculptures, collages and textile artworks with more wearable pieces that bridge the gap between art and fashion.
Apparel and accessories in the exhibition, which was curated by Camille Okhio, a senior design writer at Elle Decor, include an 18-karat-gold-and-emerald ring ($4,400) by Joy Bonfield-Colombara, an artist and goldsmith in London, and a quilted cotton-and-linen coat ($1,250) by Sarah Jean Culbreth, a fashion historian in Rockaway Beach, Queens. Also featured: a $900 hand-sewn doll wearing a miniature version of the coat.
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