I’ve flown from London to Mumbai, New York, Marrakech and Tokyo to see jewellery collections unveiled, and clambered 60m down a metal ladder inside a tourmaline mine in Brazil, hard hat and all, all in the name of reporting on this fascinating industry.
I’ve prised open oysters to reveal pearls in the sheltered inlets of southern Japan, and drunk Champagne in Coco Chanel’s former home in the South of France while trying on diamonds bigger than my eye, before being ushered out to make room for the people who actually buy this stuff.
It is all amazing, and I know how incredibly lucky I am, but in truth, I'd trade it all for a pair of Courtney Marama's hand-carved earrings in yellow carnelian, personally sourced by her from the Coromandel coast.
Courtney Jamieson (her brand name is Courtney Marama) makes jewellery exclusively from minerals found in Aotearoa pounamu, carnelian, agate and obsidian which she carves herself and sets in delicate gold fixings as drop earrings and stacking rings.
(Who knew Aotearoa had these materials? Pounamu and gold, of course, but glowing, orangey-red carnelian from the Coromandel, and opaque, lavender blue agate from Mount Somers in Canterbury?)
Courtney works from a studio in her home outside South Waikato, which she shares with her equally talented partner-in-lapidary (and life) Jonathan Percy, daughter, and dog.
I visited Courtney last year while researching a story on Māori carving for Vanity Fair on Jewellery, the magazine I edit, and eventually managed to buy a pair of pounamu drop earrings after sitting on her waitlist for a month.
When I returned home and wore said earrings out in London, often in the company of fellow jewellery writers who have seen absolutely everything, the questions didn’t stop.
“Where did you get those?” “Are they vintage?” “Can you hook me up?” Alas, I can’t. Courtney is a one-woman-band, and has but one pair of hands.
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Advertise with NZME.She can make as many pieces as she can make, and no more. Owning a pair of her earrings is, to me, the epitome of luxury.
Like many notions, the idea of luxury is relative. When I last lived in New Zealand in the early noughties, a sterling silver heart-shaped pendant by Tiffany & Co. was a birthday gift so bewilderingly fancy I could barely bring myself to wear it outside my crappy flat.
Now, it’s vintage pieces designed for Tiffany & Co. by Angela Cummings in the 1980s that make my heart stop.
(You can still find her distinctive hardstone-inlaid gold bangles and earrings at auction and vintage jewellery dealers for prices way out of my reach. And that heart-shaped pendant? It’s somewhere in the house.)
Is luxury a walk-in wardrobe filled with Hermès Kelly bags, or is it an enormous blue diamond, yet another world record breaker, reaching a hammer price of US$57 million at auction, like the De Beers Cullinan Blue that sold this April at Sotheby’s?
Is it a buss-down pendant (a giant set of initials, say, in gold, fully pavé-set with diamonds, hanging off a rapper’s neck) that shows off how much cash you have, or is it a seriously underrated gemstone called a spinel, in a specific shade of grey, sourced and carved by a tattooed American who goes under the moniker Top Notch Faceting, that is quite literally one of a kind?
Jewellery is one of humanity’s oldest forms of art and arguably the only wearable form that has intrinsic value.
The cotton, cashmere, nylon, or silk of your garments isn’t destined to last long. The woven fibres of the ancient Egyptians only stick around (and barely) if they’ve been embalmed, otherwise they turn to dust like everything else.
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Advertise with NZME.But minerals diamonds, emeralds, gold, silver, pounamu and moonstone can last forever. That’s why jewellery, in even its most diminutive, modest form a demure, sterling silver Tiffany & Co. pendant bought for a clueless 22-year-old Kiwi, for example has value.
Celebrating the old guard
Van Cleef & Arpels, the very storied maison based in that epicentre of high jewellery that is Place Vendôme in Paris, was founded in 1906 when a young couple the daughter of a gem dealer and the son of a lapidarist (gem carver) married and joined forces.
Van Cleef & Arpels is best known for its iconic Alhambra collection hardstone-set, four-leafed-clover shaped motifs based on an original design from 1968.
It’s since riffed on the motif with super-long necklaces, bracelets, earrings and more in myriad materials blue agate, tiger’s eye, mother of pearl, pale pink opal, inky black onyx and every mineral in between.
It’s an endlessly copied formula by every big-name brand seen on Bond Street and Madison Avenue a repeated motif, coloured hardstones, a smattering of diamonds but it’s a successful one.
I have an extremely low-key single pendant on a very fine chain in mother of pearl that I watched being cut and set in Marrakech, that is worth very little.
To me, however, it’s the ultimate luxury because it was created, in front of my very eyes, for me. I breathed in the dust of the mother of pearl as it was being carved. I talked to the lapidarist as he went to work.
But if luxury is classified by how hard something is to obtain, then it would be a little watch designed by the house in 1932, its case and strap carved from wood, the drawing of which was exhibited in Milan a few years back. It was never even made. Convincing Van Cleef & Arpels to make it now, and buying it does it get more exclusive than that?
Meanwhile, vintage and antique jewellery is enjoying a popularity surge not seen in decades. With half of the luxury resale market concentrated on watches and jewellery, vintage and pre-owned luxury is one category that continues to expand, with global management consultancy McKinsey predicting growth of 20-30 per cent per year.
No longer the remit of old ladies buying brooches, the vast category that is vintage, antique, and pre-owned jewellery and watches whether fine or costume is now appreciated by a far younger demographic.
Take Timothée Chalamet wearing vintage Cartier brooches on his hip, his hoodie, and his ties at recent red carpet showings, an astute move by one of Hollywood’s sharpest dressers to show that he’s more than just a canvas for paying brands, but a serious collector.
New-ish resale platform Omneque, which specialises in not just authenticated antique, vintage, and costume jewellery, but also loose gemstones, has seen enormous interest from young, South East Asian customers wanting to replicate Lady Gaga's 80s Gucci looks (Gaga herself bought an 80s-era Gucci bangle from the site after borrowing it for a London premiere) and even younger Gen Z-ers who understand that the 1980s isn't just the era their elders were born, but an era with some pretty incredible trends to be inspired by.
It isn’t just re-sale platforms and auction houses that are realising the value stored in vintage and antique jewels. From New York City to London, Paris, and Milan, some of the most esteemed jewellery purveyors are now all boasting a vintage and antique assortment.
Pragnell’s of Stratford-upon-Avon boasts some breathtaking mid-century jewels, while Briony Raymond in NYC, who caters for well-heeled, uptown folks wanting zodiac charms with impressive price tags, has an entire section of her showroom devoted to vintage stock.
Enter the very famous, mock tudor building that is Liberty of London, and one of the busiest spots in the entire department store is the one selling antique charms.
And surprise, surprise the most important jewellery dealers showing their wares at the very snootiest of art fairs TEFAF, PAD and the like are all mixing the most exclusive contemporary jewels with antique offerings.
The young and new
Luxury today seems to be, for many consumers, based on the brand stamped on the product. But if a million other people are buying exactly the same gold bangle as you, is that really luxury?
The new breed of jewellery brands seem to know what they’re doing with their marketing strategies.
Homer, Frank Ocean's jewellery brand, with a by-appointment-only store on Bowery in New York City, utilises codes of contemporary, urban jewellery: purple, nano-ceramic plated gold; primary-coloured enamel coatings; lab-grown diamonds; playful, cartoonish-motifs, all donned in the marketing campaign by beautiful, young men showering and doing laundry, captured in gorgeous, raw style.
It’s all painfully cool and modern, the store the sort of place I’d expect to be refused entry to, but that works for them in the same way that Hermès’ waitlist for a bag works. Exclusivity or the air of it does wonders for boosting desirability.
Veert, the new brand from New York-based mega fashion consultant Julia Lang, does not sport insane price tags or even insane materials.
The gist of it is the colour green, genderless designs (read: boys in pearls), and super-cool ambassadors A$AP Rocky, Giveon, J.I.D et al.
Prices are relatively affordable (and they offer jewels in both vermeil and 18kt gold on request), but the cool-factor of Lang and her associates gives Veert an air of luxury otherwise associated with French and Italian heritage brands. You can’t buy 200 years of history, just like you can’t buy cool.
Eye of the beholder
Ask any jewellery connoisseur who the most exclusive jeweller in the world is, and they’ll invariably reply with a single word consisting of three initials JAR.
Joel Arthur Rosenthal, a Paris-based New Yorker, has made his name not only by his singular designs, but the pervasive myth that is his relentlessly snobby stance on who can by those designs.
I’ll never forget being told about the famed jeweller by a loaded socialite whose parties I had to organise when I lived in NYC in my early 20s.
“This ring is by JAR, babe,” she told me. “He refuses to sell his stuff to people he doesn’t like. My mother is a big client.” JAR? I remember thinking. The biggest jewellery in the world is called JAR?
Nearly 20 years later, and I’m old and wise enough to make my own decisions. Yes, JAR’s work is unparalleled in terms of ingenuity, originality, and nuance, but it’s also unaffordable to the vast majority of people. Courtney Marama’s long, streamlined earrings, on the other hand, are relatively affordable and made in New Zealand.
You just might have to sign up to a waitlist to get your hands on a pair, but those few months of waiting will be worth it the moment you slide those long, cold drops of greenstone into your lobes.
Because no matter how much they pay, no one else has quite the same earrings. And that, to me, is luxurious.
This story was originally published in volume eight of Viva Magazine.
