It’s mid-November already (eeeek!) and here in LA the weather has been quite literally hot and cold! I can’t stay ahead of the curve when it comes to Fall styling, so I decided to steal some inspiration from a girl who has mastered the layered lifestyle. Say hi to this month’s finding, Jelena Cikoja. Trained as an engineer, this model, muse and co-founder of accessories company Abeona NYC, highlights the best things in life on her Instagram feed, which has become my daily fashion fix! She shares her health, travel, delicious recipes, beauty basics and clothing must-haves. Jelena and I first met at an editor breakfast I hosted in NYC and we quickly went from strangers to friends. While she was in studio layering on the sparkly goods, our conversation naturally flowed into stories about love. She’s found love in so many forms - with her fiancé Joe, her sweet pup Cali, with cities she’s called home, and with the community she is cultivating online. I think her favorite quote describes Jelena in a nutshell: “she loved life and it loved her right back”. Well, I'm smitten...now it's your turn!

As one of our long-time muses, Jelena is no stranger to layering jewels. I gave her a sneak peak of one of our upcoming styles (that we already know you are going to love!) Here at ZC, we love a good neckmess, so to start off, she layered up one of our small curb chains and medium oval link chains. From there, she wanted to add in a little bit of color with our rainbow sapphire dangle necklace. Of course, we can’t leave out the diamonds! She layered up an emerald cut diamond pendant, and large bezel diamond cross, finishing the look with a star-set floating diamond locket.

Jelena’s love of jewelry is apparent. She couldn’t help but layer up every piece that she could get her hands onto! We swapped out some of her day to day jewels with our new favorite medium chubby hoops, a prong diamond flower stud. From there, she layered up on geometric hoops on one ear with a diamond shaped hoop and a knife edge diamond hoop, plus a prong diamond double ear cuff. On the other, she added in a prong diamond double huggie and our other fan favorite—the chubby ear cuff, which paired so well with the medium hoops! Jelena’s ear stories are to die for—even her mom used to say she was so cute that she would 'nibble off a piece of her ear!'

It’s hard to know where to start with her ring and bracelet layering—Jelena truly is a master of pairing unexpected pieces together and making it look totally wearable. She loves the look of rings on index fingers—something I had previously strayed away from, but I think I am now a convert! She went bold on one hand with a chunky concave ring, a half round wide ring stacked with two linked rings and finished off with an emerald marquis pinky ring for another splash of color! She used the other hand to totally layer up with a stack of diamond rings next to our pave 5 band ring. She kept things a bit simpler on the pinky with a marquis diamond and graduated bezel set band. On one wrist she donned a pave crossover X cuff, while on the other she went for a stack of graduated bezel diamonds, ID bracelets & a star set diamond cuff.