Oh, Jemima!(Jemima Khan)

Byline: editor: Sally Singer

Sally Singer discovers why the famously private heiress threw her legendary style into the Azzaro ring.

A few years ago, the fabulous British heiress and humanitarian activist Jemima Khan had that unicorn-in-the-forest shopping moment: On a trip to New York, she bought a dress at Jeffrey by a brand she'd never heard of, loved it, and thought, I must track this down. But she had no luck--until, that is, she accompanied her then-boyfriend Hugh Grant to Paris (for the Cesars) and by sheer chance walked out of the Hotel Le Bristol to be confronted by her near-mythic quarry: the Azzaro store. Khan--a "quite sensible" shopper who buys "what I want to be able to wear in ten years, regardless of what is happening in fashion"--not only "splurged" but also met the house's young creative director, Vanessa Seward, a fellow devotee of the slinky, the soignee, and the seasonless. For Seward, the meeting was equally fortuitous. "She has exactly the kind of allure I want for Azzaro," says the designer. "Jemima is always one of my references."

They took circular embroidery motifs and applied them to Azzaro's narrow, demure, but always glamorous silhouettes

Fast friendship ensued, and now the two have collaborated on a capsule collection of eighteen pieces of, as Khan puts it, "just things that I want to wear." Drawing inspiration from an antique tribal wedding smock from Pakistan (Jemima is the former wife of the legendary cricketer and politician Imran Khan), they took circular embroidery motifs and applied them to Azzaro's narrow, demure, but always glamorous silhouettes. (Seward: "If ...