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| The Marine Symphony necklace by Golay is an orgy of golden snails and gem-studded starfish. |
It was BaselWorld opening day and, already, there had been a robbery. A band of thieves armed with pretty girls to distract security raided a pearl exhibitor in Hall 3 the day before the show opened. The dejected dealer lingered in the Perles de Tahiti booth to commiserate with general manager Martin Coeroli, a ubiquitous presence on the international pearl-promotion circuit.
"How much did you lose?" a visitor asked.
"A lot," said the dealer in a voice that suggested he'd resigned himself to the loss. "Seven figures. What can you do? It happens."
Years ago, news that professional criminals at a jewelry fair known for its world-class selection of precious stones had hit a pearl booth would've seemed strange, if not funny. Was there a grandmothers' convention in town?
After decades of prim and proper connotations, however, the pearl is enjoying a star turn in the fashion spotlight. Taking advantage of lustrous gems that come in sizes, shapes and colors previous generations could never have imagined—bordeaux or mocha, anyone?—brand-minded pearl producers and risk-taking designers are driving a boom in the pearl industry that is redefining the global trade.
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| Autore's gem-accented ring places just one sublime green pearl on a pedestal. |
"Ten years ago, akoyas were three-quarters of the market," says Russell Shor, a senior industry analyst at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). "Then we had the big boom in Chinese freshwaters and we started getting pearls in all kinds of colors—purples, pastel pinks, goldens—and, suddenly, pearls could fit a lot of different looks."
The abundance was visible at both the Vicenza and Basel fairs. Displays featuring never-before-seen combinations of pearls—including mixed strands of Tahitian, South Sea, akoya and freshwater gems—and far-out colors such as "chocolate," made clear that among the fashion crowd, pearls are a hot commodity.
Although definitive statistics on the pearl trade, as with colored stones, are difficult to come by, in 2005 the worldwide retail market for pearl jewelry was estimated at $4 billion to $5 billion. Chinese freshwater pearls accounted for the overwhelming majority of production with 1,500 tons of mostly low-grade pearls, according to a Golay report in The International Pearling Journal. (By comparison, white South Sea pearl production in 2005 totaled about 10 tons, for the first time surpassing the annual harvest of black pearls, which totaled about 8.5 tons.)
The flood of gems has inspired designers not typically associated with pearls—Yohji Yamamoto, for one—to action. The avant-garde Japanese fashion icon recently teamed up with Mikimoto to create a 20-piece pearl-jewelry collection. It will officially debut in July during couture week in Paris.
Robert Wan, the father of the Tahitian pearl trade, has paired the disciplines of pearling and fashion, too, with accessories that make the best of both worlds: pearl-beaded bikinis and dresses, for example.
Other designers are capitalizing on the pearl's unpredictable shape to create truly unique jewels.
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| Gellner's earrings add marquise-cut diamonds for a vintage look. |
"Baroques are really the news," says Helena Krodel, media manager for the Jewelry Information Center in New York. "They're interesting to designers and, hence, to consumers, because they lend themselves to creating one-of-a-kind fantasy pieces. People aren't just stringing pearls anymore—they're designing around them."
But it's not just trendy designs that are lifting the pearl market to previously unimaginable heights. The upper echelons of the industry, with their $100,000 South Sea strands and auction-worthy ensembles, are seeing an equally impressive surge in demand.
"We've seen a huge increase in our South Sea business," says Maureen Gribbin, spokeswoman for Mikimoto, which just launched its own grading system for South Sea pearls, citing the growth in sales as the impetus.
Mikimoto isn't alone. Sydney's Autore is combining the introduction of a new grading system with a high-profile branding push that included its first appearance as an exhibitor at the Basel show. There, the company unveiled a standout collection of pearls in both classic and gem-intense fashion designs.
Alas, the two brands will have to contend with another power player in the pearl-grading business: GIA. The lab dedicated its annual GemFest in Basel to a discussion of its forthcoming pearl report, which will indicate whether the pearl is natural or cultured, whether it comes from a saltwater or freshwater environment, the species of mollusk in which it was grown and treatments it underwent (if any).
"GIA recognized the need to respond to the market's growth," said Ken Scarratt, director of GIA Research, Thailand, at GemFest.
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| Schoeffel's L'Amazone diamond and pink sapphire ring in 18-karat rose gold exemplifies the vogue for pairing pearls with colored stones. |
He said identifying pearl treatments that include dyeing, heating, irradiation or bleaching, which are typically used to improve or change the color, and maeshori, a Japanese term for a process that smooths the nacre, can be very challenging, sometimes requiring sophisticated instrumentation.
Following Scarratt's talk, a panel of pearl experts took the stage. They included Shigeru Akamatsu, senior researcher at Mikimoto; Jacques Branellec, managing director of Philippines-based Jewelmer International Corp.; Coeroli of Perles de Tahiti; and Nicholas Paspaley AC, executive chairman of the Paspaley Group in Australia.
"I see this as the first international pearl certificate to provide the ability to know what we're looking at and what we're buying," said Paspaley, who was enthusiastic about the GIA report's chances for growing the market.
Supporters in the audience nodded their heads in agreement.
"To have a report that's consistent, verifiable and honest is a huge plus," said London-based Chrissie Coleman Douglas, one of the named designers at Iridesse, Tiffany and Co.'s pearl-jewelry retail venture. "I think it's the best thing that has happened to the pearl industry in eons."
Source: nationaljewelernetwork
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