Modern Jewelry Trends

Wright & Lato, champion of 585 platinum, a “14 karat” alloy of 58.5 percent platinum and base metals, was acquired by Novell Design Studio after filing for bankruptcy under Chaper 11. Novell, which has been filling orders for Wright & Lato since November, acquired the company’s assets, customer list, and intellectual property. Although Novell will keep the Wright & Lato brand name, it has no interest in continuing Wright & Lato’s line of 585 platinum jewelry. The high price of platinum has led many in the jewelry industry to seek alternatives, including new whiter alloys of gold, palladium, and platinum alloys with platinum group metals (which are less controversial than the base metal alloy promoted by Wright & Lato since they are already included in FTC marking rules.) So far, palladium has picked up the most converts since this platinum group metal is similar in appearance to platinum but much lighter as well as much less per ounce, resulting in much more affordable jewelry even in 900 and 950 alloys. Without the support of Wright & Lato, 585 platinum seems unlikely to pick up any market share.

This holiday season, online retailers of jewelry and watches were one of the biggest winners. According to estimates by comScore Networks, online sales of jewelry and watches were up a staggering 66 percent this holiday season. In fact jewelry and watches were the fastest growing product category for online sales. During the first 50 days of the holiday season, total online retail spending reached $21.68 billion, a 26 percent increase from 2005.

Retail stores continue to be a favored jewelry brand-building strategy. Italian fine-jewelry company Pomellato is the latest to jump into the U.S. market, opening its first U.S. store on Madison Avenue in New York. Pomellato is no stranger to retail,though: there are now 25 Pomellato stores worldwide. The brand has been advertising in U.S. consumer magazines and the New York Times magazine for several years with a distinctive campaign featuring Nadja Auermann. The company says it will open four more U.S. stores, two on each coast, by 2010. Pomellato’s new 1,800-square-foot store in a turn-of-the-century mansion on Madison at 64th Street, with 16-foot-tall windows offering a view into the store. The brass door handle was designed to resemble a Pomellato ring. Wood screens serve as a backdrop for the front window showcases and as partitions. An original exposed brick wall serves as a backdrop for artwork by Taiwanese artist Michael Lin. The store also includes a private selling room, furnished with a vintage table and chairs.

Perhaps the most succinct and devastating critique of the diamond industry and its efforts to defuse the controversy created by Blood Diamond comes from comedian Stephen Colbert, on the Colbert Report, a four-times a week deadpan pitch-perfect parody of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. The critique of the diamond industry takes place in The Word, the signature comedy segment of the show (with printed subtext commenting on and undercutting Stephen’s monologue.) The Word is “Clarity.”
You can view the video through that link, but here’s a preview: “The point is while it’s horrible to hear about these human rights violations a lot of it is hype. Let’s look at the facts. The diamond industry is now regulated by a rigorous oversight system called the Kimberley Process. (”A diamond is like, totally forever.”) The Kimberley Process tracks diamonds from mine to store to make sure incoming shipments are conflict free, (Until they reach married couple) and it relies on what is historically the best way to check industrial human rights abuses: voluntary compliance and self policing. (Works for global warming) The best part is the guys who came up with the process if the diamond industry. They’re not gonna lie to themselves! (If they do, they’ve go perfect make-up gift.) So clearly they’ve cleaned up their act but the word isn’t out, someone’s got to spread the message. Well riding to the rescue is hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons. Mr. Simmons just came back from a fact finding mission in Africa where he found “diamond mining today ninety nine and 3/4 percent clean.” That is 31/100th of a percent cleaner than Ivory Soap. (Ivory Coast still dirty) If there were any real problems with the industry, one of the De Beers representatives who led Russell Simmons on his tour would have said so. (Falling on def ears) Plus Simmons will clearly bring an objective view to this issue. For proof, just check out his jewelry company, where you can get your lady a Hello Kitty yellow gold pavé diamond ring. What better way to tell her: I love you, I don’t want to exploit anybody, and I wish you were a 12-year-old Japanese girl. So this Christmas folks, head on down to that jewelry store and remember, nothing says “I love you” like spending the monthly food budget on a pair of earrings she’s afraid to wear in public. (Except to “Save Darfur” gala) And all that really matters is that diamonds are beautiful, and something that beautiful could only come from a beautiful industry. (A beautiful mine).”

One of the hot items this holiday season is beaded bracelets by Meredith Frederick. The bracelets, which just roll onto your wrist, are stackable too, so they encourage multiple purchases. Frederick, who until recently was a pastry chef, spent years developing her technique for weaving strands of beads into thick, patterned rope bracelets and chokers. They resemble traditional woven bead bracelets but in sophisticated materials like gold, silver, and gemstone beads. They are one of the top holiday items at Bergdorf Goodman this year, according to senior vice president and general merchandise manager Ed Burstell. The bracelets, which retail for $450 to $750, have been featured in several holiday shopping guides.

Today two New York press conferences addressed the issues behind the movie Blood Diamond. In one way, they couldn’t have been more different. The first, held in the Open Society Institute, was organized by Global Witness and Amnesty International. It addressed flaws in the Kimberley Process and the atrocities that took place in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s and the conflict going on today in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They asked for government oversight and auditing of every diamond purchase. Filmmaker Sorious Samura showed ninety seconds of his upcoming documentary on conflict diamonds where he easily sells rough diamonds with no paperwork to sleazy guys on 47th Street in New York. A scattering of television cameras and a few consumer journalists puzzled through talk of the Kimberley Process, with one T.V. cameraman worried that the footage was not sufficiently dramatic asking in frustration: “Could you tell us about the suffering that diamonds cause?”
The second press conference two hours and two blocks away in the glossy Mandarin Oriental of Time Warner Center was packed with journalists and cameramen from the realms of music, fashion, culture, and, of course, jewelry. Russell Simmons, with a wall of slogans behind him a la Bush, spoke about his fact-finding trip to Southern Africa and the benefits that diamonds have on the economy of Botswana and South Africa. He stressed the fact that 85 percent of the revenue from Botswana’s diamonds went to the people of Botswana and discussed his new Diamond Empowerment Fund. The managing director of Debswana, Botswana’s mining company, spoke about the benefits diamonds bring to the economy. The first question came from a gossip columnist from the New York Post, asking Simmons where his wife was and whether or not they were still married.
Although these press conferences came from two perspectives on the issue, they had one thing in common. They demonstrated why a complex issue is not best discussed through the prism of celebrity and celebrity culture.
This pot has been well stirred by the media circus surrounding Blood Diamonds, of course. Neither of these press conferences would have happened without the news hook of the movie. But it was pretty clear from the questions that no one in the consumer media really knows or cares much about these issues and that all the media attention about conflict diamonds isn’t generating much understanding.
So how will consumers react to all the noise? Those who care will probably follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s advice to ask retailers to show them their policy showing that they don’t carry conflict diamonds. Then promptly forget about it.

Today’s best Blood Diamond article comes from New York magazine: the movie review, They Cut Glass. And Hands. The article leads off with what’s become the bottom line for us all: will it actually change consumer behavior? And, dear me, what will the celebrities do at awards time? Wear paste? Read it and weep:
“It will be fun to see which stars are willful and/or clueless enough to wear diamonds to this year’s Academy Awards if the political action melodrama Blood Diamond—about the carnage surrounding the mining of the gemstones in Sierra Leone—racks up a lot of nominations. Forgive me for opening on such a superficial note, but the truest measure of the worth of the movie—which is both excitingly well made and dispiritingly formulaic—will be in what trickles down: whether strong box office plus Leonardo DiCaprio’s earnest proclamations on Oprah plus the opportunistic shame of Hollywood goddesses can disrupt Tad and Suzy’s engagement-ring expedition and Dad’s anniversary surprise for Mom.”
And honestly, once the movie buzz dies down, what will the jewelry blogs write about? Who is thinking about our needs?

An article in the New York Post today called Diamonds Without Guilt suggests that consumers looking for alternatives to “politically incorrect conflict diamonds” choose synthetic diamonds instead. The article, which also suggests diamonds from Canada as an alternative, goes on to spotlight Solaura jewelry set with Gemesis synthetic diamonds, Canadia brand diamonds from Canada, Rand brand diamonds from South Africa and Botswana, and Brilliant Earth, an online retailer who sells Canadian diamonds and has generated a lot of publicity about the conflict diamond issue. The article is full of little mistakes which make it a little hard to take seriously. (Fittingly, Guilt is misspelled on several of the links to the online story) Rand diamonds are said to be from Arapa and Jaaneng, not Orapa and Jwaneng, Canadia diamonds are available at “Fortune-Off.” (Seriously: the New York Post has never heard of Fortunoff’s?) The lead of the story is that synthetic diamonds are 75 percent less than natural but the price comparison is based on the best colors of fancy colored diamonds. Much later in the story the article explains that synthetics are only about 10 percent less than natural colorless diamonds. But the story is a big publicity boost for Solaura, the brand that sightholder Michael Werdiger created to sell jewelry set with Gemesis synthetic diamonds. The article even refers to the Solaura site, where you can see a pretty impressive list of retailers that carry the brand. It’s probably less beneficial for the other brands mentioned just because some readers may think that they sell synthetics too.
Ready to read more about conflict diamonds? With Blood Diamond already in previews and officially opening this week, you have no choice, really.
The New York Times had an article on Blood Diamond this weekend called Hollywood’s Multifaceted Cause du Jour. The point was basically that an industry that lives by celebrity placement and endorsements can also die by them.
Today’s USA Today is skeptical that a message movie about Africa will be a big-budget success. The article, Blood Diamond in the Rough, is pretty balanced, with quotes from Sierra Leone and not just the usual suspects. I’m getting pretty tired of all the diamond puns in the headlines though and the movie doesn’t even open until Thursday.

How does a downtown independent jeweler grab some attention on Black Friday? Northeastern Fine Jewelry on Union Street in Schenectady or Western Avenue in Guilderland, New York, decided to try some attention-getting gift with purchase promotions. The store offered a free iPod Shuffle with any Black Friday purchase totaling $399 or more and a free 15″ Polaroid flat screen television with any purchase of at least $1,000. How did it work? Well, pretty good from a sales perspective. Northeastern gave out 40 flat screen TVs and 30 iPod Shuffles. But the store was also hoping to attract the attention of the hordes of media out reporting about Black Friday crowds. According to Northeastern’s public relations representative Mark Bardack, the lure of the mall was too seductive. “One of the largest malls in the country is based in Albany, Crossgates Mall, so the media habitually gravitate there to do Black Friday stories. With limited media staffing on Black Friday, it was all about the malls.” Still, Bardack thinks with more promotion and lead time, a better result might be possible. So start planning for next year! Half-price diamonds before 8am? Breakfast at Northeastern (or your store?) Maybe next year Black Friday can have a bit more sparkle.