Modern Jewelry Trends

With brown such an important color in jewelry design today, from brown diamonds to smoky quartz and even wood, it isn’t surprising that a new shade of brown is also becoming popular in pearls also. Enhanced “chocolate” Tahitian pearls add a warmer shade to the Tahitian palette of blacks, grays, and greens. It’s a pretty distinctive color that never really existed in Tahitians before, although there are lovely natural bronze and taupe colors. The enhancement process is proprietary and the companies involved have been pretty cryptic about the details but it is commonly characterized as “bleaching.” The latest issue of Gems & Gemology, GIA’s award-winning gemological journal, provides a few more details about these enhanced pearls, with an exhaustive analysis of treated and non-treated pearls treated by one company, Ballerina Pearl. The bottom line (saving you pages of reflectance spectra and photoluminescence charts) is that no foreign substance was found, lending credence to the claim that the pearls are indeed bleached, which would basically put them in the “enhanced” category rather than the “treated” category for those of you keeping track of these matters. That would seem to justify the strong market for these shades, which are priced pretty similarly to natural color Tahitian pearls. However, the same issue of G&G includes a report from Dr Henri Hanni of the SSEF on the subject of chocolate pearls. He tested five samples from three different dealers. Only one of the five was bleached with the new process: the other four were dyed, plain and simple. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, I would expect dyed pearls to be priced lower than the new enhanced product. Make sure you buy brown pearls from a reputable dealer who will correctly disclose the source of that fashionable color.

At last night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, there were no va-va-voom red dresses or major bling: the trend was instead for tasteful and fashionable understatement. Two trends characterized the best dressed actresses. 1) Neutral colored dresses in taupe, cream, bronze, and grey and 2) the jewelry equivalent: old-mine and rose cut diamonds, which provide more sophisticated glamour. Cate Blanchett epitomized this trend in an Indian pendant necklace featuring more than 100 carats of rose-cut diamonds, along with a pair of 2 carat antique mine cut Diamond stud earrings by Fred Leighton. (Remember Angelina Jolie also wore rose-cut diamonds and a vintage Indian look from Bochic at the Golden Globes.) Other antique fanciers: Edie Falco in a 19th Century necklace and earrings, also from Fred Leighton; Felicity Huffman in rose cut earrings from Martin Katz; and Patricia Arquette in an 1820s diamond riviere necklace from Neil Lane. One good omen for the Oscars: updos dominated, as at the Golden Globes, the better to see those diamond earrings!

What do women want for Valentine’s Day and what do they expect? According to a new survey of 3,000 women by Jewelry.com, these are sadly two very different things. Not surprisingly for a survey on a jewelry site, more than half, 53.5% of women surveyed, wanted jewelry on February 14. But only 14% expected to receive it. A mere 1.8% actually wanted a card but 18% said they expected to receive a card. And while there was no one who said they wanted nothing for Valentine’s Day, 18.4% answered that they expected to receive . . . well, nothing. “Cupid clearly has a lot of work to do,” said Virginia Halevi, editor-in-chief of the jewelry site, which attracts an average of 3.5 million unique visitors a month. “In addition to low expectations, the biggest and most surprising finding of this survey is that most women feel Valentine’s Day could be the best occasion to truly love themselves.” According to Halevi, the Jewelry.com survey showed that women are willing to buy themselves the Valentine’s Day gift they really want: 68.5% of the women polled said they would consider buying themselves a Valentine’s Day present this year and 49.75% said the gift they would buy themselves would be jewelry (with 54.55% willing to spend over $50). “This self-purchase attitude on the most sentimental of holidays appears to be part of a growing trend,” Halevi says.

A collection of 21 designs that were selected in the first international Tanzanite Foundation’s Celebration of Life Jewelry Design Awards competition were presented in a gala at the New York Public Library this week. Winners were selected from entries from 20 countries based on beauty, design originality and interpretation of the theme “Be Born to Tanzanite” in five categories: luxury brands, independent designers, manufacturers, rising stars, and accessories. The winners are Kwiat, Maria Webster for Boodles, Shaun Leane, Stephen Webster, Talento Joias, Dima, Laurence Ratinau, Maria Canale for Suna Bros., Rodrigo Robson, Sevan Bicakci, Charlotte Ehinger-Schwarz 1876, Colin Waylett, Ginny Dizon, Ruth Grieco, Zoltan David, Arabel Lebrusan, Claire Woolley, James Powell, Sabine Roemer, and Louis Mariette and Stuart Weitzman with Levian. Below three of the winning rings, from three of the hottest designers in jewelry today: from left, Sevan Bicakci, Shaun Leane, and Stephen Webster.

Blood Diamond, which hasn’t done very well at the box office so far, may have a second chance: today it was nominated for five Oscars, including two top acting awards. Leonardo DiCaprio, who was widely expected to be nominated for The Departed, was nominated instead for Blood Diamond. Djimon Hounsou was nominated for best supporting actor. The other two awards were for film editing, sound mixing, and sound editing.

One of the easiest ways to build traffic on your website and collect names, addresses, and emails of potential new customers is a sweepstakes. But anyone who has tried to set one up knows just how complicated all the rules and regulations can be, requiring hours of legal work by a specialist. Now a new online service called Caffeine is offering to do the grunt work for you. The company combines many small companies into one large sweepstakes, taking care of all the paperwork and even the prize. Caffeine is run by ePrize, who runs promotions for large corporations, like Disney and Coca-Cola. The best part about the new service is that you pay only $1 for each new customer name you collect, you don’t have to pay a set fee or set-up costs. Like other online advertising, you can set a limit to what you spend each day. The contact names you pay for can be limited to a geographic area: you can opt only to pay for consumer names with addresses within a 20-mile radius, for example. Caffeine can offer contests for so little because many companies are pooled together into a single giveaway. The prizewinner might not be from your list of entrants and there is no limit to the number of entrants. But because several contests are running at the same time, you can join a contest easily with little or no lead time. Another promotion offered by the company is customizable online coupons that you can use to drive traffic to your store. Caffeine will really be useful if it can be incorporated into search results advertising: consumers may be more likely to click on ads if they know the company has a sweepstakes or a coupon. They are also more likely to send a link to the site to friends and family.

With award season upon us, the battle for celebrity red-carpet placements is in full swing. At the Golden Globes, the big winner was Lorraine Schwartz, whose innovative designs were worn by Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Cate Blanchett, Jessica Biel, Sheryl Crow, Emily Blunt, Sarah Paulson, Isla Fisher, and Sean Combs. Although other jewelers may have had as many placements, Lorraine Schwartz designs stand out in a crowd, with their distinctive and unusual style (as well as highly visible scale!) FabSugar blog has great details and images of all the pieces. The classic large diamonds loaned by most other jewelers often aren’t really distinguishable from each other. There were a few exceptions. Angelina Jolie wore a distinctive Indian-style suite in 22k set with rose-cut diamonds by Bochic. (We have a picture of the necklace below, as well as yesterday’s post of Jolie wearing it.) Heidi Klum always does a good job showing off her collection for Mouawad and last night was no exception, with a very visible $1 million choker with a heart-shaped diamond locket. Hilary Swank wore a large Chopard flower in brown and white diamonds in her hair, which had great impact on the red carpet. But Chopard also gets a lot of press for paying celebrities, including Swank, to wear their pieces. (A Chopard spokesperson in a story on the topic in the Los Angeles Times: “Saying one brand pays stars when they all pay stars is ridiculous.’”) So some of the good publicity for the brand is undercut somewhat. The New York Post dishes on this topic in a recent story called Carpetbaggers. At least those that contract to wear the jewels are guaranteed to credit the company (and pull back the hair so those earrings show.) I am sure Leviev is a bit upset that Drew Barrymore could not pronounce the company name when showing off her Leviev earrings at the Golden Globes.

Every award season includes stories on placements and the business of the red carpet. But the Diamond Information Center, which actively promotes diamonds before the Golden Globes with a luncheon organized with InStyle, is rising above the fray this year (and helping to offset any Blood Diamond-inspired red carpet remarks like those by Djimon Hounsou at the Globes) by offering nominees or presenters at the Golden Globes, Grammys, or Academy Awards who wear a diamond right-hand ring a $10,000 donation in their name to a cause or project in Southern Africa. Raise Your Right Hand Ring for Africa is sponsored by red-carpet regular jewelers, including H. Stern, Martin Katz, and Neil Lane. DIC hopes to raise $100,000 for these causes this year and is well on the way already.

Dramatic jewelry lit up the red carpet at the Golden Globes last night and the most successful looks were truly golden. After years of diamond-intensive bling, this year’s best jewelry styles showed texture and unusual gold work (in addition to diamonds, of course). The trend was best captured by the suites worn by Angelina Jolie, Beyonce, and Jennifer Lopez. Angelina Jolie wore an unusual vintage Indian-style suite by Bochic in 22k gold set with rose-cut diamonds. Beyonce wore fancy colored diamonds in unusual shades surrounded by gold, all by designer Lorraine Schwartz: a natural multi-colored diamond and old ivory bangle; earrings with 40 carats of diamonds in unusual colors; and a grey, yellow and white diamond right hand ring. Jennifer Lopez chose gold and black gold chandelier earrings, coil bracelets and rings by Lorraine Schwartz.

Tattoo Your Diamond, an unusual diamond brand by sightholder Dalumi, will soon be available in the United States. The brand is in its third year in Italy, where it is sold exclusively through diamond wholesaler Laudiam. The “tattoo” is a personalized message engraved on the girdle of the diamond. Settings are designed to reveal the message and consumers are given a magnifying glass so they can read the message. So OK, laser engraved girdles are nothing new, although Dalumi’s service does allow customers to have the message engraved in their own handwriting. But, let’s face it, a diamond tattoo is just so much cooler and more romantic than a laser engraving. Until the brand is available here (Dalumi has, up to this point anyway, been looking unsuccessfully for one large retail partner to bring the brand to the U.S.) you can just use the tattoo concept to help younger customers understand (and covet) a laser-engraved message.

As expected, with luxury booming, holiday sales at Tiffany & Co. were strong this year, increasing 15 percent to $818 million. Sales in November and December were strong across the board, in the U.S. and overseas in all divisions. U.S. retail sales increased 12 percent to $432 million. Comparable store sales rose 8 percent, including a 15 percent increase at the flagship store in New York. Both the number and average amount of transactions increased. Michael J. Kowalski, chairman and chief executive officer, said “We saw healthy sales increases in many product categories ranging from diamonds to silver jewelry.” Tiffany plans to open five to seven new stores in the United States in 2007.