De Beers and Couture celebrate diversity in fine jewelry at New York event

The seismic shift moment of the George Floyd murder and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests shed a spotlight on racial inequities and injustices, triggering a movement within the fashion and design communities, to examine and self-correct its stance on diversity.

Initiatives such as the Fifteen Percent Pledge, the CFDA Impact: Black in Fashion Council, and Harlem’s Fashion Row, among others, were launched to support the BIPOC design entrepreneurs. The fine jewelry industry also rallied. With the help of De Beers, Couture, the annual fine jewelry show in Las Vegas, launched its Diversity Action Council, or Couture DAC for short, in 2020. Its premiere initiative pairs young BIPOC designers with established jewelers for mentorship and other business and sourcing-focused workshops. Together with De Beers, the trade show hosted a dinner in New York to celebrate DAC’s newest group of jewelry creatives.
 
Neiman Marcus precious jewelry buyer and DAC board member, Eric Ford, welcomed guests to the Chelsea Hotel dinner and introduced Sally Morrison, a jewelry industry force and De Beers PR director for natural diamonds. Speaking to FashionNetwork.com and addressing the room, Morrison relayed the impetus for the diamond giant to get involved.
 
“Our efforts have been focused ‘upstream’ as most of De Beers 20K employees live in South Africa. It’s safe to say, like many others, we realized we needed to do more downstream to show what we value as a company,” Morrison said.
 
In addition to supporting DAC, De Beers led the #BlackisBrilliant partnership with RAD Red Carpet Advocacy by financing BIPOC designers to create award-show-worthy pieces and pair them with celebrity stylists for red carpet styling. Another project in collaboration with Blue Nile, Ten/Ten, featured ten designers who each made an engagement ring sold on the e-comm site.
 
Morrison explained that De Beers’ involvement in DAC led to a second year in which they provided raw materials and funds to create fine jewelry collections to show at the Couture trade show for the Radiance initiative. Participants included Angely Martinez, Ashley Thorne (A.M. Thorne), Jules Kim (Bijules), Kassandra Gordon (KLG Jewellery), Khadijah Fulton (White/Space Jewelry) Lola Fenhirst, Lorraine West, Maggi Simpkins, Melanie Eddie, Olivia Shih, Sara Bautista, Viviana Langhoff and Zulaikha Aziz (Mazahri).

 
Historically, getting into the jewelry industry meant you were born into it or had access to significant capital. “Without that, you can’t design fine jewelry,” she said, adding, “You need to be able to afford supplies and producers to give you things on memo. These are barriers for designers of color; it’s even harder for them to get this. We need to address the inequities in the system and get materials in the hands of creatives to support making a collection that can help relationships in the market.”
 
Jeweler Lorraine West experienced firsthand how the De Beers-supported DAC impacted her business positively, leading to a domino effect of opportunity in the industry.

“Being a part of DAC allowed me to open my work to a broader audience and what it takes to be competitive in the designer fine jewelry market,” she said, continuing, “The designers who exist in this space are incredible, and some have more money to create big collections while younger designers need to figure out how to do with what they have access to. You don’t know what you don’t know; you need to be in the space, in the community, and in the environment to see how the tradeshows and jewelry space work. You have to see it to be it.”

West was paired with jeweler Zoë Chicco.
 
Known for her nipple hoops—which in 18K-gold and diamond pavè were exhibited in the Sotheby’s Brilliant & Black selling exhibition by Melanie Grant—West’s work is now sold at Muse X Muse, a New York multibrand showroom and has also launched a philanthropic nipple hoop collection with Greenwich Street jewelers, where 20 percent of the proceeds are donated to the Living Beyond Breast Cancer charity. West credits the program and subsequent opportunities to DAC.
 
“I’ve been in the business for 26 years, first making fashion jewelry and then selling bespoke fine jewelry since 2011, but I am really only three years in. I have a whole new professional life and a super supportive community since participating in the mentor program,” she added.

Gannon Brousseau, the executive vice president of luxury, design, and creative of Emerald, the group that owns and operates the Couture tradeshow, among others, explained the process of pairing the up-and-coming designers with established designers.

“It’s a process of looking at aesthetics, skill sets, and who share artistic points of view and speaks a similar language,” he said, citing examples of designers Ara Vartanian and Alexia Connellan matched for their concern over the environmental impact of mining.

“They are similar in a holistic view of the business. Another pairing includes Zahn-Z designer Hiba Husayni, a Syrian refugee who wants to find her voice with the outspoken and larger-than-life personality of Marco Bicego President Moise Cohen,” he added.
 
The participants of the second Couture DAC include Alexia Connellan, Ama McKinley (Ilium Wing), Bliss Lau, Casey Perez, Hiba Husayni (Zhan-Z), Opeyemi Omojola (Octave Jewelry), Sasha Flynn (Adore-Adorn) and Jules Kim (Bijules) who serves as the group’s mentee liaison.

The evening also celebrated BIPOC graphic design as Morrison gave a shout-out to designer Toga Cox, who designed the visuals for the #BlackisBrilliant campaign and Radiance collection. The De Beers executive also revealed that the designer has been tapped to resurrect the ‘Seize the Day’ campaign, an aspect of the iconic ‘A Diamond is Forever’ De Beers campaign.

“He is a great designer to make the campaign fresh and just happened to be from the BIPOC community. Diversity has made the work better and stronger and the brand look better,” she said.