LupRocks Gossip

The Jewels of Geneva

Of all the places I’ve visited on my travels around the gem and jewelry world, nowhere is the cult of luxury as palpable as it is in Geneva. The Swiss city is home to the United Nations, international banks and institutions of diplomacy and international cooperation, but to walk along the shores of Lake Léman, particularly at night when the neon signs affixed to the top of every building in town blaze with names such as Piaget and Patek Philippe, is to behold a place in thrall with luxury. And not just any luxury. A hub for the world’s finest stone-setters and watchmakers, Geneva is a city of jewels.

I was reminded of this last week, when I attended the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, an invitation-only event ruled by a coterie of 17 elite brands, most of them owned by the Richemont luxury group (think Cartier, IWC, Panerai). As a repeat visitor, I knew what to expect: a plush exhibition space of 24,000 square meters notable for its gourmet meal service and urbane ambience, buzzing with cigarette smoke and a low-key Babelian hum.

This year, however, things had changed—no cigarettes allowed, for starters. Far more significant was the show’s new timing. Typically held in early spring, following the start of Baselworld, SIHH had been moved to its new slot in mid-January due to a scheduling conflict at the Geneva Palexpo venue. I imagine organizers hadn’t planned on such a drastic change coinciding with a global economic crisis, but what can you do?

Personally, I didn’t mind the excuse to travel. I’ve got a few good friends who live in Switzerland and the new dates afforded me an opportunity to see them. They also gave me the chance to indulge my love of fondue, raclette and chocolate—Switzerland’s greatest exports, as far as I’m concerned.

But back to the jewels; in Geneva, they’re inescapable. I spent my final day in town hanging out with my friend, designer Sandra Müller. Born in Chile and schooled in Switzerland, she’s now a dyed-in-the-wool Californian who was visiting from LA in order to discuss a potential collaboration with Shahpour Jahan, the creative director of Jahan, a seventh-generation jewelry business with a flagship boutique located on Geneva’s famed avenue of luxury, Rue du Rhône.

We sat in Shahpour’s office overlooking the lake for an entire afternoon, as I modeled one necklace after another, each crazier, more gem-encrusted than the next. Jahan’s clients are the royals of Saudi Arabia, where weddings are incomplete without head-to-toe bling for every female guest, from the eldest generation on down, so you can only imagine the opulence.

“A person has a doctor, a lawyer,” Shahpour said, as he placed a floral collar of diamond and sapphire roses around my neck, “and we consider ourselves an advisor—someone to improve their jewelry capital.”

As I gazed out the window, to the city by the lake, surrounded by signs advertising more luxury brands—Bédat, de Grisogono—all I could think was, how fitting.

Russia's Rising Jewelry Czars

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been immersed in the Russian jewelry scene because I’m writing a story about Russian jewelers for the International Herald Tribune’s Dec. 13th watch and jewelry section. It’s a subject close to my heart: I was born in St. Petersburg and emigrated to the United States in 1978, when my parents decided to join the exodus of Jews seeking asylum in the West. Like most Soviet citizens, we didn’t have any jewelry — there simply wasn’t any to buy. So when I returned to Russia in 2004 to attend a month-long writing program in my hometown, and simultaneously research a series of articles about the Russian diamond trade, it came as something of a surprise to learn that Russia lays claim to one of the world’s most important jewelry traditions.

I suppose I could have named Peter Carl Fabergé, the master jeweler from St. Petersburg who created all those imperial eggs for the czars before the Bolsheviks stormed the country in 1917. But beyond some foggy notion of his contribution to Russia’s storied past, I had no idea that what I remembered as the grim and gray Soviet Union had once been home to such opulence. Then I went to the Hermitage.

(Truth be told, I’d already been to the grand museum, a complex of six buildings including the former residence of the czars, though I’d gotten no further than the front entrance. It was the 2004 summer solstice, the shortest and whitest night of them all, and Paul McCartney was playing a concert in Palace Square. With the sun blazing at 9 pm, I danced to old Beatles songs with two drunk Russian men who couldn’t seem to get past the fact that I was an Amerikanka. All I really remembered of the night was Sir Paul singing “Back in the U.S.S. R.” and the surreal lavender light reflecting off the windows of the Winter Palace.)

When I finally visited the museum’s stately jewelry galleries a couple weeks later with my friend Alexei Davidov, then a marketing director for Kristall Smolensk, Russia’s largest diamond manufacturer, the riches on display gave me a jolt of national pride (the Russians do it better!).

In this day and age, when the news is (or was) filled with stories about Russians oligarchs casually plunking down millions of dollars for gaudy diamond-encrusted status symbols, the incredible legacy of Fabergé and his contemporaries seems to have been forgotten by the West.

Now a cohort of talented jewelers is trying to change that. The first firm that comes to mind is Moscow’s Jewellery Theatre, founded 10 years ago by Irina Dorofeeva and Maxim Voznesensky. As exhibitors at the Baselworld luxury fair, they’re known to international buyers for their avant-garde jewels, which have the magical charm of a fairy tale. The Atlantika earrings shown below, for example, wouldn’t look out of place on the chiseled profile of an ice princess.

Further south, in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, Lobortas & Karpova has perfected the art of enameling that was brought to ancient Rus from Byzantium, while in central Russia’s Kostroma region, considered the cradle of the Russian jewelry industry, operate companies like Platina, representing the vanguard of Russian jewelry manufacturing.

Which is to say nothing of the Russian jewelry diaspora, and the scores of émigré jewelers (I'm a fan of Belarus-born, Brooklyn-based Lena Sklyut) who’ve brought a uniquely Slavic style to their adopted communities. So while India, France and other countries with a more explicit connection to jewelry than Russia get all the attention, don’t count out the Russkies. The same sensibilities that inspired their soulful contributions to world literature, music and art are alive and well in the jewelry sphere. The West may think of them as far-out, but in Russia, they're simply considered "klassnaya."