This Mother’s Day is more emotional than usual for jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer: She is welcoming her daughter home from her first year of college and simultaneously preparing for the birth of her third child.
In the midst of this family joy and bit of chaos, the 49-year-old Meyer also is working on the restoration and reopening of her store in Pacific Palisades—the Southern California neighborhood devastated by wildfires in January 2025. Meyer’s jewelry store survived the wildfires but had to be gutted and rebuilt. She hopes to reopen in August.
Meyer’s personal life—she coparents daughter Ruby and teenage son Otis with actor Tobey Maguire and is expecting a baby girl, and planning a wedding, with music executive Geoffrey Ogunlesi—has become regular fodder for People magazine and other celebrity news outlets. She tells JCK that her professional endeavors, including her jewelry business, help keep her calm in the midst of the past year’s highs and lows.
“Taking her [Ruby] to college really shattered me. I couldn’t function properly. It felt devastating,” Meyer says. “But your goal as a parent is to raise these children so they’re ready to fly.”
Right now, the designer adds, she’s feeling “more excited” and “more inspired” than ever before.
“Mother’s Day is a crazy, beautiful thing: I have a 19-year-old and I’m about to have a baby,” says Meyer. “I’ve realized through this process that life is long. You never know what is going to happen. You have to be open and ready for all of the amazing things that are coming your way.”
Meyer tells JCK that while tending to her many tasks—moving Ruby home from college, designing jewelry for the store’s grand reopening, setting up a nursery, among them—her thoughts will drift to whether she should add her baby’s initial to her existing pendant for Ruby and Otis or create an entirely new one. Whatever she decides, that’s her Mother’s Day gift to herself.
“I’m bringing letters back into the Jennifer Meyer world. As a perfectionist, I would like to have already released our new jewelry, but it really brings us back into the world of sentimental jewelry. It’s important for me to create the kind of pieces you never want to take off,” she says.
When Ruby asks to wear Jennifer Meyer jewelry, her mom often tells her to just go online and order a four-pack of inexpensive bracelets on Amazon—why invest in fine jewelry when you could lose it on campus somewhere?
As far as jewelry for her clients, Meyer says her gold heart and “mama” pendants are always best sellers for Mother’s Day. Anything with hearts, a child’s initials, or good-luck symbols are ideal gifts for the most important women in your life, she says.
Her advice for moms this holiday? Ask for what you want. Mothers give everything they have—body, mind, and spirit—to those they love.
“A sure way of not getting what you want is not saying what you need,” Meyer says. “People can’t read our minds. Speak up. This is the one day a year when you’re allowed to say what you need.”
She is doing just that. After some more nesting and a maternity leave, Meyer will get back to work and again immerse herself in her company—it, too, is her baby, after all.
“It’s a full-circle moment because I was pregnant with my first when I started my business,” Meyer says. “It’s such an interesting time because I’m more excited about the business than ever.
“Part of that is reopening the Palisades store. We had to get rid of everything. We’re in the process of rebuilding it, alongside everything else in Palisades Village. We’re going to relaunch and rebrand as part of that.”
Top: Jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer, 49 and the mother of two teenagers, is expecting a baby with with fiancé Geoffrey Ogunlesi.(Photos courtesy of Jennifer Meyer)
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