Recently I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times archive from 1912: "The Etiquette of Jewels: The Woman Who Takes Care Not to Wear Them for Mere Garish Display Can Add Much to Her Appearance." It describes how diamonds and other jewels can enhance a woman's "natural loveliness."

It's interesting to observe the rather ham-handed way that women are portrayed in the article by today's standards. While the author makes a point that it's important to pay attention to proportion and harmony when choosing jewels, he also notes how women should be acutely aware of their imperfections, rather than comfortable with their natural beauty "for where a woman fails to mentally admit her own shortcomings, she is more apt to emphasize them to others." She instead needs "the calm calculation of a soldier planning a battle, thus intelligently facing the difficulties to be dealt with."

Women need to wear not necessarily what they like and what gives them the most pleasure, but rather items that are the "most correct" for, and I quote, "her height, the contour of her face, her age, (or rather, to express it in the modern phrasing, her dignity,) the definite proportion of each feature, and her hands and arms." The article goes on to describe which stones go best with which complexions and hair colors (because heaven forbid, you wouldn't want to produce "an unpleasing, gypsy likeness."

While this advice is questionable at best, there is one bit at the end that rings true to me:

The appeal of jewels, however much may be said to the contrary, is not a woman's vanity, but to her love of the beautiful.

Women must choose diamonds and other jewelry that they interpret as truly beautiful, diamonds that makes them feel alive and truly unique. There is no automatic process to determine the "most correct" diamond for someone; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The connoisseurship of water is a topic that's reared its head before on Janus Thinking, and today I mention it again after spotting this article on ForbesTraveler.com, about the state of the pricey water market.

Michael Mascha, a water connoisseur and author of Fine Waters, believes that bottled water is the next wine, and like wine, it has terroir, a sense of place. He says that waters have a different taste and "mouthfeel," and though bottled water has become a commodity, it's actually shifting back towards being "considered a natural product with its own origin."

On the question of where the best water in the world comes from:

That would be akin to asking where the best wine is coming from. That’s the beauty of what I am talking about… We can have many different waters with many different flavors with many different aspects, and we should really enjoy the differences and the variety and not look for just the best water.

Mascha approaches water like a true connoisseur; I'm still not entirely sure that water is something worthy of connoisseurship (because you can't tell its provenance solely by tasting it, and it's freely available at taps everywhere), but I appreciate the attention to detail with which he examines it and the pleasure he obviously gets from it.

Photo by S Baker

While many luxury brands are plastering their logos in more places, fashion house Bottega Veneta continues to offer logo-free designs that are marked by quality, not flash.

This profile of Tomas Maier, Bottega Veneta's head designer, in the New York Times today provides a great example of how companies can go after a small market of 'in the know' quality seekers and be very successful.

Maier doesn't offer three different sizes of a bag at different price points; he believes that one bag, if it's of high enough quality, should be good enough. Bottega Veneta uses fabrics and leather of the highest quality and pays attention to details that other clothing and handbag makers might ignore or overlook. From the article:

While other designers were producing dart-free baby-doll dresses as if they were so many Fords, he concentrated on deceptively simple, painstakingly constructed styles priced from about $1,200 to $6,000 for an evening dress. The dressmaker touches — ruching, serpentine seaming, hand-beading and elaborate pleats — are recognizable to a small but informed clientele.

This sort of attention to detail allows people to appreciate luxury in a subtle, more demure way, which could be appealing given the current state of the economy. Said Milton Pedraza of the Luxury Institute:

[Affluent consumers] don’t want to be screaming luxury right now. They don’t want something flashy that everybody else has. They are looking for unique handcrafted things that can’t immediately be reinterpreted at every level of the marketplace.

Read the full article here.

Photo by Crystl

One for the Doh! file: Lefkos Hajji, a floor-fitter in London, recently chose a novel way to ask his girlfriend to marry him: she would literally pop the question, popping a balloon to find a diamond engagement ring inside. Seemed like a great idea until a gust of wind swept away the £6000 ($12,000) ring as Hajji left the florist where got the balloon. He searched for two hours but had no luck finding the balloon or the ring. And his girlfriend was unimpressed, refusing to speak to him until he gets another ring. Was he unlucky? Stupid? Romantic? It was a lovely expression of love, but perhaps he should try something a bit more conventional with his next ring.

[via Reuters and The Sun]

Recently the Financial Times reported on Future Contemporaries, a new group founded by London's Serpentine Gallery for the purpose of making younger people (under the age of 39) enthusiastic about art (and perhaps interested in becoming benefactors of the Serpentine). For £1000 annually, the Serpentine offers members a contemporary art education programme that it hopes will encourage a lifelong appreciation of art. The group has been to private showings in artists' studios and has had personal tours by artists in private gallery settings. A membership cap of about 100 helps to keep to keep the group exclusive and also of a manageable size for intimate events.

It's a great idea for a gallery with art worth appreciating to encourage connoisseurship. Oftentimes people need a little guidance as they begin down the road to connoisseurship--and the experts at a gallery are just the people to provide it.

Photo by Armel*

With uncertainty facing the economy around the world, it's difficult to forecast where diamond prices will go in the near (and far) future. On Friday Rapaport issued a warning that speculative prices for large diamonds may not be sustainable because of a lack of interdealer demand. On the very same day, Mining Weekly reported that "there is no reason for the markets to soften" and prices would continue to increase, especially in the rare and larger diamond section of the market. Who will prove correct? All we can say for certain is that the outlook for diamond prices is uncertain.

Photo by mafic

Moti Ganz, the chairman of the Israel Diamond Institute, gave an interesting speech last week at the Third International Rough Diamond Conference in Tel Aviv. Speaking on the topic of producer strategies, Ganz argued that there is too much polished diamond on the market because manufacturers are polishing when they don't have customers lined up to buy the stones.

Ganz asked rough producers to refrain from the use of tenders and auctions as a way to unload rough, saying they hurt manufacturers and the producers themselves in the long run. He also called for rough producers to help promote diamonds as a luxury product in the manner of De Beers, who spend 3% of sales turnover on advertising. His reasoning:

In the long-run this investment will be repaid, as the awareness of diamonds increases in the consumer market. The diamond is not a simple luxury product. It is not a bag – you buy it one week, and next year when it goes out of fashion, you buy another one. Women give bags that are out of fashion to their housekeepers. I have never heard of a woman who gave her diamond jewelry to a housekeeper. They pass on diamond jewelry to their daughters and granddaughters or set them in new jewelry. The diamond never wears out in their eyes. Therefore, the investment in marketing must be more sophisticated than that of other luxury items.

I agree--diamonds get passed on and the love they represent only grows with time. But should the responsibility to promote diamonds fall higher on the supply chain? I think Ganz might be on to something, if a new marketing effort from rough producers is done in a coordinated way.

Read Ganz's speech here, and an A-DX.net piece about it here.

Photo by emurray

There was a fascinating article on wine published in Slate this week: The Greatest Wine on the Planet: How the '47 Cheval Blanc, a defective wine from an aberrant year, got so good. It's about how this particular Bordeaux, through a confluence of controllable and uncontrollable factors, became the Bordeaux against which all other Bordeaux are compared. The author, Mike Steinberger, had the chance to try the '47 Cheval Blanc at a wine tasting, and described it as

the warmest, richest, most decadent wine I'd ever encountered. Even more striking than its opulence was its freshness. The flavors were redolent of stewed fruits and dead flowers, yet the wine tasted alive; it bristled with energy and purpose.

As one would expect it's becoming increasingly rare, but it remains at the top of the 'to-try' list for many a wine connoisseur. Read the whole article here.

It's not fit. It's feelings.

says a recent article in Forbes on the continuing appeal of very exclusive items with very expensive price tags.

Perceived high quality, a similar (but higher) price compared to the nearest luxury competitor, a desire to impress peers and create the reputation that comes with ownership of certain luxury goods--these things combine to create greater demand for objects not everyone can access.

This is particularly true when items are given as gifts, according to Professor Jagmohan Raju of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania:

If an item is given as a present, then the price is a demonstration of affection and consumers will often justify a higher price.

I have difficulties equating price paid with level of affection for the recipient. Of course spending more money on a gift will buy you "nicer" things, but the value of the gift in emotional terms will depend on how the recipient interprets it. The price of the gift could be $1.80 or $1.8 million--what matters is whether it will mean something to the recipient and whether he or she will truly appreciate it.

Great pleasure and enjoyment can be had by the person who has a visceral, meaningful connection between herself (or himself) and a piece of jewelry. That emotional bond is often created when jewelry represents the love between two people, but it can also manifest itself in the memories of loved ones gone. This winter's Intelligent Life includes a lovely piece on heirlooms, those jewels passed down which, of monetary value or not, provide their owner with priceless value in the form of memories. One example:

An extremely old, rich and arthritic English aristocrat once told me she could no longer force her mother's diamond rings--the size and shape of Brazil nuts--over her swollen knuckles. "I'm getting them made into shoe buckles", she announced, "so that they can stay close to me." Did she worry, then, if she wasn't wearing them? "Oh no," she smiled. "I keep them because they remind me of Ma."

The article suggests men choose pieces they hope will become heirlooms based on the rare stones involved, whereas women look for artistry. In either case, the provenance of an heirloom (and the love and beauty therein) creates a rich tapestry for future possessors to appreciate. Read the whole article here.

What do women want for Valentine's Day? That's the question Jewelry.com asked hundreds of women in a recent survey--and their top response was (somewhat unsurprisingly) diamond jewelry. Though this year, respondents were more sensitive to price than in years past. 38.4% of respondents said their partner usually spends no more than $99, and 39% believed that this was a suitable limit for the budget (whereas 24% said "the sky" should be the limit for Valentine's gifts).

Even so, almost half of respondents expected "disappointment" or "something he picks up last minute" from their partners. When this is the case, it appears more and more women are taking matters into their own hands. Almost 30 percent said that they've purchased Valentine's gifts for themselves in the past, and 90% said they bought themselves a piece of jewelry as a way to say "I love myself."

The woman who purchases her own jewelry interprets the luxury and pleasure she gets from the piece in her own way--in many ways she'll appreciate it more than if it's a surprise from partner.

[via JCKonline.com]

Jeff Klein, luxury hotelier, recently published a nice guest post on the New York Times Style Magazine's The Moment blog. Klein operates The City Club in New York and Sunset Tower in Los Angeles, and in doing so has come to define 'luxury' in a very Janusian way:

The word luxury means different things to different people. Some may like to have scripted lines thrown at them. On a service level, luxury comes down to a connection between the customer and the employee. This can be exemplified by something as simple as remembering the customer’s name.

As luxury always depends on how the individual interprets it, customizing an offering to take account of a customer's individual needs is an excellent strategy for delighting customers and offering luxury that they'll appreciate. Klein offers a few examples: the maître d’ bringing a diner to his favorite table with his favorite drink already on it, or a housekeeper remembering not to put a homemade brownie on the madame's pillow because she's on a diet. Certainly those in the diamond and jewelry business can and should cultivate similar relationships with their customers.