NEW YORK, NY.- There are certain rules that Sophia Roe can’t seem to shake from her years working in restaurants: short nails, no nail polish, a separate sink to wash her hands.

But when the James Beard Award-winning chef is cooking for her half a million Instagram followers in her Brooklyn culinary studio, Apartment Miso, Roe’s approach is more relaxed. “When I’m in my studio, this is my space to spiritually take my shirt off, wear what I want,” she said. “If that means I want to wear five earrings and a hat and rings on every finger when I cook, I do it.”

In an interview that has been edited and condensed Roe talks about one charm-covered earring that serves as a wearable expression of who she is and a representation of the people who matter to her.

Q: Tell me about your earring.

A: The earring itself is a Yona Kohen earring. It’s just this long, simple drop earring. It’s so long that if I stand, I have my head straight, the earring almost touches the bottom of my neck or the top of my shoulder. I’m notorious for wearing two completely different earrings. Sometimes maybe even only just one earring. And so what’s happened is, over time, I’ve just got all these little charms and these little bits and bobbles of other earrings and other necklaces that have just acquired on this one earring. So this one earring is like 10 earrings. It’s like a charm bracelet for my ear.

Q: Do any of the charms have significant meaning?

A: I think it’s kind of like its own little organism at this point. It just keeps shifting and changing. There’s a little mushroom on there that my manager gave me. She gave me a set of mushroom earrings, so I just took the mushroom charm off and put it on this one earring. When my COO first started with me, she was my assistant, and she got me these grape earrings. And so I just took the grape off the earring, and now it’s on this one earring. So definitely there’s stuff on there that means a lot to me, but I don’t think it’s all sentimental or nostalgia-driven. I think my earring is very much a physical representation of what’s happening inside of me. So even if I am having a monochrome kind of day, I think that earring very much personifies who I am, people that matter to me.

Q: Do you ever think about passing it down to someone else?

A: This isn’t some heritage, beautiful, passed-down kind of thing. I mean, Yona Kohen is this amazing jewelry designer, and it’s a beautiful piece of jewelry on its own, but what I’ve done to it is definitely not. I actually feel like if she saw it, she’d be like, “What’d you do to my earring?” But there’s nothing precious about it, and I think that’s kind of why I like it. I feel like if I lost it, I’d just make a new one and that if I were to give it to someone, it would mean I really, really cared about them.

Q: Why is it important for you to have these pieces on?

A: It’s kind of just part of my uniform. You know how there’s a finishing touch for people? Everybody’s got their thing. For me, it’s like if my bangs look good and my eyeliner is good and my earring’s right, then I’m good. Everything else doesn’t matter. But, bangs, liner, earring — now I’m ready to go.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.