Next STEPS

An industry vet branches out with a sleek new shoe line.

- Véronique Hyland

On Nina Christen's first foray to New York, she was outfitting lions and hyenas. She had left her home country of Switzerland with a dream of heading to the greatest city in the world, where she landed a job tailoring costumes for The Lion King. Twenty years later, she is returning to the city with something a little less Pride Rock: her namesake shoe line, Christen, launching exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman next month. BILAL EL KADHI (Meanwhile, the show remains a Broadway staple, and she thinks some of the costumes she worked on might still be treading the boards.)

The Chilean-Swiss designer's résumé is a rarefied list of brands that have been defining accessories over the past decade: The Row, Loewe, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and Celine among them. Working at Phoebe Philo-era Celine, she says, “was intense and interesting. She has such an expectation [of] creating novelty and new attitudes. As a creative person, it makes you push yourself further.”