Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.
“The funny part about this year’s [Council of Fashion Designers of America] nominees is [that] I’m properly friends with every single person that I’m up against,” Presley Oldham says. “I will truly be happy no matter who wins.” The designer, known for his genderless, pearl-centric jewelry, is sitting in his studio in Hudson, New York; a surfboard hangs on the wall behind him. His pre-CFDA Awards plans are slowly coalescing. He’s up for his first-ever nod, for American Emerging Designer of the Year—the only jewelry brand in the running. He is still deliberating on his outfit, but his plus-one, at least, is secured: Sydney Lemmon, star of the Broadway play Job.
The designer recently checked off another first: his debut show at New York Fashion Week, where he cast actors Cole Escola and Brandon Flynn. Though he loves his creative community upstate, “I got very used to being in my space and making things by myself,” he says. Becoming more front-facing “allowed me to step into the fashion world and interact with a lot of other designers who I’ve become friends with. It feels like a big step for my company and myself, the work that I’ve been able to achieve and the scale that I’ve been able to grow my company.”
Oldham grew up, he says, “crawling on the runway.” When he was just a toddler, his uncle, beloved designer Todd Oldham, would design snakeskin outfits made from fabric remnants for him to wear to New York Fashion Week. (In a happy coincidence, Todd won the CFDA Emerging Designer award himself back in 1992.)
In college, Presley’s first job was working at Todd’s studio, and more recently, the two collaborated on his NYFW show. “It was a big undertaking,” he says. “I was very lucky to have Todd to ask for advice and confide in, as someone who has gone through it many times. I wanted to make the most of the opportunity and use it as a way to build the world of my brand,” which he decided meant including full looks. Though he doesn’t plan on launching ready-to-wear, “the clothes were the canvas to show the jewelry.”
Having an in-person show also allowed Presley, who launched his business during lockdown, to help people experience his line IRL, when it has mostly existed digitally until now. He expanded his assortment to include cast-metal pieces for the first time, along with bespoke glass items and headpieces. It was a group project: his grandmother’s beaded flowers inspired some of the designs; his father, a sculptor, helped make the rings, while his mother, whose background is in marketing and PR, helped brainstorm the language around the show. “And Todd and my grandfather made the backdrop. It felt like everyone just helping lift me up.”
Growing up in such a creative family, Presley was early to exploring his artistic side. Todd notes that Presley’s grandmother, a fine artist and jewelry maker, “spent incredible amounts of time nurturing our creativity and helping inspire a way of seeing and being curious. We just went through our lives looking at things a little differently. I think the most important thing we share is this beautiful school of Mom that we both got to have. I grew up with a craft table in the living room instead of sitting in front of the TV.” Presley started out in the performing arts and theater world, where he remained until his mid-20s. “But all the while, I was still making things,” he says. “That was how I recharged my batteries at home, and it was more of a private thing.” When he began putting his work online, “it took off in a way I could have never imagined. It was a way to outwardly express some creativity that had always been inside of me.”
The two previously collaborated on Todd’s Maker Shop project, launched in 2022, with Presley incorporating buttons and hardware from Todd’s past collections into one-of-a-kind jewelry. “We have a way of communicating in a shorthand that feels very natural,” Presley says.
Back when Presley was just a kid, Todd says, “he had his own ‘office’ in the factory. It’s such an odd, hothouse flower kind of idea,” Turning to his nephew, he says, “Well, how natural was it for you [to see] women walking around without their clothes on?” Presley clarifies, “Not just [any] women, but Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell! But it helped sculpt the way that I look at things. I’ve always been curious about how things are made, and as Todd is saying, I literally grew up in a factory where things started as fabric, [and] were cut into pieces and constructed into something beautiful. So it really rewired my brain.”
Jokes Todd, “You might be the only person nominated for a CFDA Award that was actually backstage as a newborn at New York Fashion Week.”
Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code, which was selected as one of The New Yorker's Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.
