Luuux

Sisters Phoebe and Annette Stephens grew up in a family of artists; their grandmother Annette Nancarrow—a painter, sculptor, and jewelry designer in 1930s Mexico—worked alongside artists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and her pieces were worn by Frida Kahlo, Peggy Guggenheim, and Helena Rubinstein. With this impossibly elegant history in mind, the Stephenses launch Anndra Neen, shell and stone amulets hung from hammered nickel breastplates and tarnished, forearm-spanning spiked cuffs, fit for a Mayan princess or medieval warrior. All are handmade at the Stephenses’ traditional, low-impact workshop in Mexico City, where they were born. The pair spend half of their time south of the border and the rest in Manhattan. “I wore one of our first pieces to a party, and a male friend of ours asked to borrow it because he thought it would give him warrior powers with women,” Annette says. “Next thing we knew, he was talking to the hottest girl at the party.”