Chatting with ARTINFO from London, where she was checking out auction previews, chic Pace Gallery director Nicola Vassell confessed that she hasn’t had a sartorial regret since childhood. “Umbro shorts, those soccer shorts, as a fashion statement in Jamaica,” she said, “were quite a mistake.” After that early faux pas, however, she emigrated from Kingston, leaving those mesh shorts behind, and becoming deeply embedded in the world of high fashion, working for 10 years as a model.

Then, while enrolled as a student of art and business at NYU, Vassell met Jeffrey Deitch while he was wandering around the Armory Show, becoming his intern in 2005. Rising through the ranks, Vassell soon assumed the role of director at Deitch Projects along with other female art-world powerhouses Kathy Grayson, Andrea Cashman, and Suzanne Geiss, a position in which her sleek ensembles and her sharp eye for talent garnered much attention.

Vassell, who cited Jamaican singer and actress Grace Jones as a source of stylistic inspiration, explained to ARTINFO that like her fashion icon, she has been turning to more androgynous looks (she recently cut her hair for a more streamlined silhouette). One of her staples is, in fact, a men's suit by designer Helmut Lang — though anything she can nab from her mother's closet works into the rotation, too.