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IV | THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2009 INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

jewelry

Luxury jewelry
defies recession
PARIS to the stage this year. In July, Fabergé,
known for the jeweled eggs beloved by
the Russian imperial court, woke from a
Arrival of new players 90-year slumber and, to kick off its reviv-
leads established names al, presented a collection during the Par-
is Haute Couture shows. In October, the
to revitalize their strategy fashion giant Louis Vuitton showed its
Dunhill said. At the same time, however,
‘‘there is a tendency to approach special
purchases in a more discerning and dis-
creet manner.’’
Fabergé’s online store allows custom-
ers to shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
from the comfort of their homes. But, FROM LEFT: FIREBIRD BROOCH, FABERGÉ; FLOWER-CUT DIAMOND, LOUIS VUITTON; BLACKENED GOLD NECKLACE, BOUCHERON; VAGABONDE RING, FABERGÉ.

BY JESSICA MICHAULT
If you never noticed the recession, you
are surely keeping good company:
Haute joaillerie, or high jewelry, it
seems, has not noticed it either.
In the past year, the topmost niche of
the luxury jewelry market has seen the
arrival of a new brand, the return of a
defunct brand and the revitalization of a
high jewelry brand that had lost its way.
In this lofty world, where prices start
in the tens of thousands of dollars and
easily exceed one million dollars, it is
not only the arrival of new brands that
points to the vigor of the market, it is
also the adoption of new strategies by
established houses to entice buyers into
their gilded salons.
Two luxury names added their luster
debut collection of high jewelry during
the ready-to-wear collections in Paris.
The two brands have in common
strong name recognition and reputations
for a commitment to quality and luxury.
But they have gone about marketing
their lines in very different ways.
Fabergé’s new investor-owners, who
bought the brand two years ago from
the food-to-toiletries manufacturer Uni-
lever, have turned to the Internet and
e-commerce to sell ‘‘Les Fabuleuses,’’ a
collection of 100 unique pieces.
People who think of online shopping
in terms of cut-price mass marketing
are missing the point, says Mark Dun-
hill, chief executive officer of Fabergé,
which is the possibility of spending
freely without being seen.
‘‘During times of economic uncer-
tainly real luxury comes back,’’ Mr.
adding an old-school touch to this new
commerce approach, if they want more
information about items shown online,
they can call or e-mail a sales adviser —
a step meant to create a more personal
interaction between the brand and its
clients.
Louis Vuitton’s approach has been
more classic. The brand has tapped the
Place Vendôme veteran Lorenz Bäumer
to create its first haute joaillerie line.
Mr. Bäumer has designed anonymously
for brands including Chanel, Baccarat
and Guerlain and has also created his
own signature collection. The result of
his collaboration with Vuitton is ‘‘L’Âme
du Voyage,’’ a collection of six sets of
one-of-a-kind jewelry creations.
Sharing the limelight with the design-
er is likely to prove a smart move. The
appointment of Mr. Bäumer as Louis
Vuitton’s new artistic director for jewelry
has given the brand instant pedigree.
While harnessing Mr. Bäumer’s de-
signer credentials, Vuitton has kept its
brand identity at the heart of the collec-
tion, which not only features elements
of its iconic flower motifs and brown and
gold color palette, but also includes a
30.1 carat diamond specially cut in the
quadrifoil form of the Vuitton flower.
These two new kids on the block are
not the only ones shaking things up at
the top end of the market. Established
houses like Boucheron and Verdura
have been celebrating major an-
niversaries by revamping their brands.
Last year Boucheron celebrated its
150th anniversary with a number of
partnerships, including its jeweled
snake design for Vertu luxury cell-
phones. The results have persuaded the
company to go further, combining its
jewelry savoir-faire with the design
skills of leaders in other fields.
‘‘This is what we call ‘Beyond Lux-
ury,’ ’’ said Jean-Christophe Bédos,
Boucheron’s chief executive, ‘‘a unique
expression of excellence in design and
craftsmanship.’’
The first fruit of this approach was a
one-of-a-kind necklace produced in
partnership with the industrial designer
Marc Newson. The necklace, made in a
design inspired by mathematical fractal
theory, sold within weeks despite a
price tag of over $1 million.
Meanwhile, the august house of Ver-
dura is celebrating its 70th anniversary
this year. Word has it that to mark the oc-
casion, the normally discreet jeweler —
best know for the Maltese Cross cuffs
that its founder, Fulco Verdura, made for
Coco Chanel — plans to broaden distri-
bution, expand production and start
e-commerce.
‘‘I subscribe to the theory that ‘too
much is not enough,’ so I am of course al-
ways looking to increase our customer
numbers,’’ said Harry Fane, Verdura’s
representative in London. The strategy,
he said, will be to keep reaching back into
the archives to inspire new collections.
‘‘Fulco Verdura was astonishingly
prolific,’’ Mr. Fane said. ‘‘Whilst not
every piece is ideal for today, it is amaz-
ing how much remains chic and super
fashionable.’’

Panthère de Cartier collection

Once unloved diamond
earns new appreciation
CHAMPAGNE, FROM PAGE I
formation Center. ‘‘There are so many shades
to create nuance and texture using browns. It’s
a way to paint in color.’’
Diamond miners, long deprived of ways to
get more money from the browns, could not
have been happier, especially Rio Tinto, the
owner of the Argyle mine.
At its peak in 1994, the open-pit mine pro-
duced 42 million carats of diamonds, about 40
percent of the world supply. By last year, annu-
al production had fallen to about 15 million car-
ats, but a decision to bore underground into
deeper ore deposits could extend the mine’s
life through 2018, with an annual yield of about
20 million carats.
The majority of Argyle’s bounty is brownish
stones, but a tiny supply of pink diamonds is
also sold, at prices of up to $1 million per carat.
Because they are extremely rare, the pinks
usually receive most of the hype. But things
are changing. Six months ago, Rio Tinto star-
ted a champagne diamond jewelry design com-
petition open to all U.S. designers. The winning

A brown diamond
is the centerpiece
of a ring by Le Vian
jewelry company.

designs — a necklace, two sets of earrings and

a brooch — were manufactured and hit the
road on Nov. 2 as part of a traveling exhibition,
stopping at leading jewelry retail locations in
the United States through Dec. 27. The show is
the most recent initiative in the 18-month-old
trade campaign, which includes sales training,
new marketing material and a revamped con-
sumer Web site, champagnediamondcen-
ter.com.
Helped by the recent attention, champagnes,
along with their darker-hued and more valu-
able cousins, cognacs, are now so in vogue that
designers traditionally wedded to colorless D-
flawless stones, including Frédéric Mathon of
Mathon Paris and Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele,
co-president of Chopard, are weaving them in-
to couture showpieces that cost tens of thou-
sands of dollars.
H. Stern, the Brazilian jewelry house best
known for its Carmen Miranda-inspired
colored stone designs, was an early adopter, in-
troducing a line of brown diamonds in 1997.
‘‘This year, our launch is a collection called
Giverny, for which we selected very light
cognac diamonds, which are literally light
beige and light brown, to recreate the idea of
dawn and dusk,’’ said the jeweler’s creative di-
rector, Roberto Stern.
In 2000, Eddie Le Vian of the Le Vian jewelry
company, a family business with roots dating
to 15th-century Persia, introduced a collection
called ‘‘Chocolate Diamonds’’ that has become
a pillar of the brand and, as of June, includes a
line of bridal rings.
‘‘It’s been an interesting journey,’’ Mr. Le Vi-
an said. ‘‘We’ve taken stones considered low
quality and made them attractive to con-
sumers.’’
Few people understand that effort better
than Alisa Moussaieff of the Moussaieff jew-
elry house in London. Mrs. Moussaieff must
compete with the likes of Laurence Graff for
cartier.com

rare colored diamonds at auctions.

‘‘I recall that nobody else wanted them and
we kept on buying them,’’ Mrs. Moussaieff said
of her early experiences with brown diamonds
in the 1960s. ‘‘We made a brooch with different
shades of brown: light, dark and grayish. You
combine all the shades together and you get a
magnificent ball of fire.’’