The majority of jewelry that I see marketed as “luxury” strikes me as fake luxury jewelry. Let’s call it fluxury. Yes, you read that correctly. FLUXURY.
To begin with, many global brands, year after year, produce variations on designs that we have all seen before. Where’s the luxury in that, I ask you?
Season after season, many global brands present us with earrings, bracelets, necklaces and rings costing U.S. $1,000 and up in uninspired designs that are made of cheap materials such as brass or acrylic resin. You call that luxury?
Fluxury rears its ugly, fake head every day in the boutiques of global brands. I know because I check these places out myself. Recently, on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, three different sales associates tried to convince me that brass and resin bracelets were made of gold and onyx.
These sales people had ZERO knowledge of the materials present in the jewelry they were selling—all of which was priced over U.S. $1,000! Consequently, they had zero product information to share and chose to lie. This is the 21st century variation on the old fairy tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes: call it The Emperor’s New Jewels.
Another foray to a Rodeo Drive outpost to my favorite French-based global brand brought me face to face with a single stone, quartz cocktail ring in plated metal. The stone was set so off center that a noticeably empty and uncool gap loomed between the right side of the stone and the right side of the bezel. How do sub-standard pieces like this ever make it onto the sales floor?
The good news is, you can refuse to buy fluxury jewelry and hold out for high luxury: you’ll never regret it and you will have some heirlooms to pass along. Here’s a short list of notable designers and online boutiques that BIJOUXReview has vetted, and in some cases, purchased from. All of them produce/sell jewelry of sound design integrity, superb materials and haute luxe craftsmanship.
Alice Cicolini (www.alicecicolini.com)
Cartier (www.cartier.us)
Tony Duquette (www.tonyduquette.com)
LJ Cross (www.ljcrossny.com)
Monique Péan (wwwmoniquepean.com)
Pippa Small (www.pippasmall.com)
Verdura (www.verdura.com)