I founded BIJOUXReview.com to showcase high luxury jewels, also known as haute luxe jewelry, and to redefine this important realm for my audience of high net worth individuals and jewelry lovers. Thus, BIJOUXReview.com reports on designers, global brands, boutiques, estate jewelers and auctioneers who create, buy and/or sell the best in global high luxury jewels. Discerning, highly informative and filled with actionable product information, BIJOUXReview.com, only covers jewelry that is:

 

• Distinctive, design-driven; produced as bespoke or one-of-a-kind pieces, or in limited editions.
• Made of high grade, rare and/or unusually striking materials.
• Hand-fabricated with fine craftsmanship techniques that are inspired by, or elaborate upon, artisanal jewelry traditions.
• More valuable than its material worth initially suggests.
• These jewels contribute to the narrative of jewelry history.

 

 

Some of the innovative global and haute luxe brands that BIJOUXReview.com reports on include:  Cartier, Alice Cicolini, Chopard, Nicholas Varney Jewels, Pippa Small, Tony Duquette, Repossi, etc. Some of these designers push the boundaries of jewelry design while also working with Fair Trade-certified gold and conflict-free; ethically sourced diamonds and other gemstones. BIJOUXReview.com also covers those who design and produce haute luxe fashion jewelry and watches, such as Loulou de la Falaise, Givenchy, Prada, etc. as well as online retailers who sell these bijoux.

 

This feature is titled “Luxury Jewelry Redefined” because it’s clear to those of us who work with bijoux that most people, through no fault of their own, cannot distinguish between luxury jewels and jewelry that have merely been branded as such.

 

Indeed, “luxury” is a marketing buzzword, and it’s used by companies to brand jewelry that has been designed to appeal to millions of aspirational consumers.

 

Manufacturers and marketers know that most of us 99 per centers have zero idea of what differentiates bijoux of rare design, fine materials and superb craftsmanship from jewels that have been effectively branded as “luxury.”

 

What’s more, for decades, market research has indicated that most people buy jewelry labeled as luxurious because it’s an aspirational, emotional purchase.

 

Indeed, so-called “luxury” jewelry is produced in mass quantities and marketed via consumer advertising on every continent– with the same globally branded messages translated into different languages.

 

Further muddying the luxury jewelry waters is the fact that fashion magazines, both in print and online, depend on ad revenue from jewelry brands to stay in business. Thus magazines parrot jewelry advertisers’ “luxury” marketing pitches. In turn, readers who may not know any better swallow the “luxury jewelry” Kool-Aid and decide to buy.

 

My aim is to provide reportage that will enhance your appreciation of high luxury jewelry while entertaining and informing you. BIJOUXReview.com also serves to guide high net worth individuals and others in making more satisfying jewelry purchases.

 

 

 

Beware of Fake Luxury Jewelry

By Kyle Roderick

 

 

The majority of jewelry that I see marketed as luxury, strikes me as fake luxury jewelry, or “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. In Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills and on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, three different sales associates recently tried to convince me that brass and resin bracelets were made of gold and onyx.

 

These people had ZERO knowledge of the materials in the jewelry they were selling. Consequently, they had zero product information to share and chose to lie. Time to update the old story of The Emperor’s New Clothes to the Emperor’s New Jewels.

 

Season after season, fluxury jewelry from global brands show me that the Emperor wears no jewels.

 

Here are highlights from a recent foray to some global brand boutiques located on Rodeo Drive:

 

*$1500 rhinestone earrings whose poorly prong-set dangling crystals are jiggling and ready to fall out. Not a good look!

 

*a rutilated quartz cocktail ring in plated metal priced at over $500. Its one and only stone is set so off center that an unintentionally empty space looms between one side of the stone and 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)

 

 

 

 

Defining Haute Luxe Jewelry

By Kyle Roderick

 

 

BIJOUXReview.com was founded to focus on jewelry designers and firms that are selling peerless luxury jewels, or what I prefer to call haute luxe jewelry.

 

Haute luxe, or high luxury jewelry is defined as limited edition, rare or best of all, one-of-a-kind.

 

Haute luxe or high luxury jewelry earns its heady appellation because its design, materials, workmanship, historicity or rarity render it more valuable than its material worth may initially suggest.

 

High luxury jewelry is design-driven rather than gemologically driven. It is crafted with profound technical finesse and refinement.

 

High luxury jewelry is handmade of rare materials or those of exceedingly fine quality…preferably, noble metals. But there can be exceptions.

 

What’s more, haute luxe or high luxury jewelry embodies style and substance that may run counter to current trends.  Its design and materials are distinctive, avant-garde, rare, extravagant; over-the-top…or all of the above!

 

Whether it’s an antique, 22-karat gold Turkmenistan tribal necklace or a piece from a contemporary master such as Pippa Small, high luxury jewelry is rich in cultural, aesthetic and symbolic significance.