Looking to get bejeweled on a budget?
Taylor Swift often walks red carpets draped in diamonds from the likes of Cartier and Lorraine Schwartz — but recently, she’s been rocking far more affordable pieces from female-founded brand Mazin Jewels on repeat.
“I sent Taylor a bunch of stuff through her stylist [Joseph Cassell]’s team, and it’s just so amazing that she keeps wearing it,” designer Lily Nizam tells Page Six Style.
Swift first selected Mazin’s crystal-embellished Chain Link Necklace ($70) for a night out in NYC with boyfriend Travis Kelce in mid-October, styling the sparkling design with a checked trench, sultry corset top and her go-to Aupen bag.
“Within minutes, it was just insane, the orders that were coming in,” recalls Nizam, who was waiting in a Starbucks drive-through when she learned her small brand had earned Swift’s stamp of approval.
Mazin Jewels Chain Link Necklace
The designer estimates she’s since sold “hundreds” of the style, which is available in silver in addition to Swift’s chosen gold.
“Who can be prepared for something like that? I didn’t have enough packaging or anything for that amount of orders — and they’re still coming in — but luckily, now, we have a handle on it,” she says, joking, “I haven’t slept since that happened.”
That’s likely because Swift went on to wear a number of Nizam’s other wares in the following weeks, from the Toggle Clasp Necklace ($70) she donned for dinner with Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley to the Open Rivet Ring ($64) and Pavé Snake Ring ($63) she picked for a night out with pals including Selena Gomez, Sophie Turner and Brittany Mahomes.
Mazin Jewels Toggle Clasp Necklace
Seeing as the Grammy winner’s famous for peppering her outfits with Easter eggs, it was only a matter of time before Swifties zeroed in on the latter design — reminiscent of the serpentine styles their idol wore during her “Reputation” album cycle — and began speculating about the imminent re-recording’s release date.
Nizam even enlisted the help of her younger sister, a “huge Swiftie,” to help her make sense of her newly snake emoji-filled Instagram comments and DMs.
“People were like, ‘The price of the ring is this, which means that,'” she says with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Taylor doesn’t have anything to do with that!'”
A former fashion publicist-turned-lawyer, Nizam decided to start her line during the COVID-19 lockdown with the help of her two sisters, designing her own website and handling her own PR to cut costs.
“I was scared to launch and invest the money,” she says. “I was like, ‘Is it going to fail?’ But I [thought], ‘OK, we’ll just put in a little bit of money and see how it goes.'”
Suffice to say, her quarantine gamble paid off; Nizam’s baubles have popped up on stars like Katy Perry, Kerry Clarkson and Sofía Vergara in addition to Swift.
And these aren’t your typical red carpet jewels; Nizam’s prices rang from $30 for a petite pair of evil eye studs to $90 for a set of four chain-accented hoop earrings, and the designer tells us it was a conscious choice to keep her retail costs reasonable.
“A lot of people [ask me], ‘Why don’t you raise the prices? And I’m like, ‘No, because a lot of people can’t afford it,'” Nizam says simply. “When I see a piece of jewelry I love on Instagram, if it’s over $100, I have to think about it and step back. That is pricey!”
As for Swift, who recently hit billionaire status and surely has her pick of precious jewels?
“In the past, I’ve known her to be very humble, which I’m sure is why she’s gotten to the point that she is today,” Nizam says.
“It’s nice that you see her supporting and wearing smaller brands.”