C & J Katz Studio

Cheryl Katz is a local girl. She stayed close to home when her parents convinced her to go to the School of Education at Boston University. But in her heart, she knew that fashion, retail, and design was her true calling. After a couple of years teaching and writing curriculum, she wrangled a job at Bonwit Teller and never looked back. As luck woul... d have it, while at Bonwit's, Cheryl ran into an old friend who helped her land a job in the fashion office of Jordan Marsh Company. This is when her real education began. Jeffrey Katz studied architecture at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he grew up. Right after getting a Bachelor of Architecture degree he headed to Cambridge to continue his studies and a year later received a Master of Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. That's when he met Cheryl, and three years later they were married. He spent the next several years at an architecture firm in Boston-where he worked with the partner in charge of interiors-and teaching at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Cheryl decided that it was time to strike out on her own as a freelance fashion stylist. This often took her to New York, helping to convince Jeffrey that he, too, should be on his own. He quit both of his jobs and together they found a great apartment in a pre war building in Midtown and moved to New York. It was 1984 when the second bedroom of the apartment on W 55th St. doubled as the first office of C&JKatzStudio. In New York, Judy Casey represented Cheryl and Jeffrey. Judy helped get them all kinds of assignments. They designed and styled sets for magazine and TV ads. Soon, fashion work morphed into design work as clients who first worked with them as stylists and set designers now hired them as C&JKatzStudio. Gant Shirtmakers was the first. Cheryl had been working with Gant on a catalog when they asked if she'd design their showroom for fashion week. That was the first project that Cheryl and Jeffrey worked on together as C&JKatzStudio. Shortly after, ...Read More