**
International Herald Tribune
II Saturday-Sunday, December 3-4, 2005
Putting the accent on accessories
By Jessica Michault
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
here is a saying that the
T clothes make the man. In the
Middle East, accessories make
the woman.
In the booming economies of Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab
Emirates, finding the perfect luxury
accessory is the key for a woman want-
ing to put her best face forward.
‘‘A European woman can express her
personality and individuality by the
clothes she wears out on the street.
Here they can only do this through ac-
cessories,’’ says François Ganes, opera-
tion manager for Fendi in Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates. He is re-
ferring to the traditional long black
abaya worn throughout the Middle
East, which only leaves visible the
hands, feet and, in some cases, face.
The sober and traditional Muslim
dress restricts the ways in which most
Middle Eastern women can communic-
ate to the world their social
status and fashion savvy. But
this limitation has only in-
tensified their focus on the
handbags, shoes, scarves,
sunglasses and jewelry
that make up the luxury
accessories market.
The top-selling ac-
cessories in the Middle
East are not the prac-
tical bag, the comfort-
able pair of shoes or
the staid head scarf. Here the bags
have to pop with color, shoes have to
sparkle with crystals and, it seems, a
face looks more much more attractive
when the head is wrapped up in a lux-
ury logo foulard.
‘‘These women are very happy and
positive people, and they are incredibly
generous, not only buying for them-
Shepard Sherbell/Corbis Saba
An Iraqi woman wearing a colorful scarf. Top
left, Gucci bags; bangles from LVMH, top center;
Versace eyeglasses, top right; a Fendi spy moulin
bag, above right, and shoes from Chanel.
selves but a lot of the luxury items are
also meant for gifts,’’ says Damien
Vernet, general manager for Louis Vuit-
ton in the Middle East and India. He
adds, ‘‘They particularly love accessor-
ies that are fresh and girlie and any-
thing that is very fashionable
and up to the minute.’’
The Louis Vuitton
brand has even adapted
its accessories line for
the Middle East to in-
clude scarves that are
cut a bit bigger than
those found in the
Western market in
recognition of the
trend of Middle East-
ern women to wear de-
signer scarves over their hair. At the
Christian Dior store in Dubai, the lux-
ury bags are almost all shoulder
bags because most Middle
Eastern women like to
have their hands and
arms unencumbered.
And other luxury
brands pepper their
stores with matching
shoes and bags — an-
other popular way to
broadcast social
status.
In Dubai, where
shopping has almost become a national
pastime and money is no object, wom-
en spend much of their free time at the
luxury shopping malls, moving in
groups from store to store, compar-
ing accessories and seeking advice
from their friends on what to buy
and what to give as gifts.
Customarily these
women who make up the
bulk of clientele for the
luxury brands are
homemakers who also
have busy social
lives filled with
gala dinners,
weddings
Modern Luxury
Women in the Middle
East are ardent accessory
shoppers. Sandal and scarf
from Louis Vuitton; white bags and
shoes from Versace and a Dior black bag.
At right, a cosmetics store in Dubai.
and family functions. And for all of
these occasions, it is important not just
to look good but also to look fashion-
able, thus creating a fierce
competition for the latest
must-have accessories.
‘‘There is no un-
derestimating the
desire for one-of-a-
kind, limited-edition
or hard-to-find bags,’’
says Ganes.
He cited a client in Jidda ‘‘who
bought up all the bags we had in the
store of three different models, a total
of 18 bags, just so that she would be sure
that no one else would have the same
bag.’’
But unlike the emerging Chinese
luxury market, where the nouveau
riche are to a certain extent fashion
novices, Middle Eastern women are
world travelers who read the
latest glossy magazines and
are on the cutting edge of
fash ion.
‘‘These women are
sophisticated and edu-
cated about fashion.
People have a miscon-
ception that this is a
place of uniformity, but
nothing could be fur-
ther from the truth,’’
says Vernet.
‘‘A Middle Eastern woman is very re-
fined in her way of shopping — very
avant-gardist,’’ concurs Ingie Chal-
houb, president and managing director
of Etoile ready-made garments.
Chalhoub, who opened her first
Etoile store in Kuwait in 1992, selling
top luxury brands like
Chanel and Christian
Lacroix, is about to
take the luxury shop-
ping experience one
step further when
she opens an Etoile
store designed by
Jacques Garcia in
Dubai this month. Taking inspiration
from places like Colette in Paris and
Dover Street Market in London, Chal-
houb plans to introduce
new designers to the
Middle Eastern mar-
ket.
‘‘I want to bring oc-
cidental fashion to the
oriental world,’’ says
Chalhoub, who will carry
the likes of Azzedine Alaïa,
Frost French, Lucien Pellat-Finet and
Stella Cadente, as well as display art in-
stallations in the store.
Preferential treatment for favorite
A 28.03 carat purple pink diamond appeared at a Sotheby’s auction in May in Geneva. Inset, diamonds from Sotheby’s Diamond.
The ultimate jewel of all jewels
By Vivienne Becker
LONDON
onnoisseurship rules. In the
C rarefied world of fine jewelry,
the all-absorbing quest for in-
dividuality, that rampant lust
for the ultimate, one-of-a-kind exclus-
ivity, is driving discerning buyers to-
ward the rarest and most ravishing of
nature’s miracles: colored diamonds.
Regarded until five to 10 years ago as
a scientific curiosity, the colored dia-
mond, with its fire and light, its soft,
powdery palette of cherry blossom
pinks, baby blue, mist gray, gooseberry
green, cognac, ochre and so many
more, has become the poetic focal point
of high jewelry collections around the
world. In today’s escalating
climate of ‘‘super luxe,’’ the
princely colored diamond, be-
yond precious, beyond fash-
ion, is the ultimate possession.
Melvyn Kirtley, Tiffany’s
head gemologist, has been as-
sembling a ‘‘critical mass’’ of
colored diamonds for Tiffany
over the past few years, build-
ing, he says, on the company’s historic
ownership of the 128.54 carat canary
yellow Tiffany diamond, mined in
South Africa in 1877. He explains the
enduring appeal: "Colored diamonds
are so immensely rare, so remarkable,
and although people are more aware of
them today, they are still a bit of a
secret, something intensely personal.
You have to discover them, and, when
you do, they open up another world.’’
It is this element of personal, secret
and understated luxury that makes the
colored diamond the perfect gem of the
moment. Usually small and subtle,
colored diamonds possess a sophisti-
cated, low-key glamour that only the
wearer, or another elite connoisseur,
can understand.
To put this into perspective, last
month at the major Geneva jewelry
auctions, Sotheby’s top lot was a rare
fancy, vivid pink diamond ring of 10.31
carats (fancy and vivid being industry
classifications), ample but not monu-
mental by white diamond standards,
which sold for $3,898,602 to a private
collector. Or think of the prized posses-
sion in Tiffany’s collection, an emerald
cut red diamond, the rarest color of all,
of only 1.59 carats, with a price tag of
$2.6 million.
If red is the rarest of natural colored
diamonds, then green comes next, fol-
lowed by blue, pink and yellow and a
spectrum of delectable shades, from
rich liqueur browns to citrus and
chartreuse and smoke gray. The color,
produced by various impurities in the
diamonds, is unpredictable: nature has
the last word.
The most celebrated of modern-day
red diamonds is the Moussaieff Red, a
uniquely pure red, large at 5.11 carats
(price on application only), and pride
and joy of Alisa Moussaieff, the London
customers tops the list of ways luxury-
brands distinguish themselves. Middle
Eastern women will reciproc-
ate by sending friends to the
luxury brand that gave
them first dibs on a limited
edition. ‘‘The goal is not to
sell a bag, it is to build a re-
lationship of confidence
and trust with the custom-
er,’’ says Vernet, who notes
that Louis Vuitton opened its first
store in the Middle East 23 years ago.
This level of customer care means
VIP clients have the cellphone num-
bers of store managers on their speed
and Geneva-based jeweler, who scoops
the most extraordinary diamonds for
her elite clients, many of them based in
the Middle East.
‘‘Whatever is rare is getting rarer,’’
she confirms. ‘‘With colored diamonds,
it’s not only the paper certificate that
matters, but the eye.’’
François Curiel, Christie’s Interna-
tional head of jewelry, agrees that
Middle Eastern buyers are the biggest
consumers of colored diamonds in
today’s market, followed by Asian col-
lectors. ‘‘The market for colored dia-
monds is as strong as it has ever been,’’
he says. ‘‘In our Geneva jewelry sale in
November, a fancy intense blue dia-
mond, of 3.71 carats, that had been un-
sold, at $850,000 in New York in 2002,
sold for $1.3 million. Good
colored diamonds are so scarce,
that they fetch 10 times the
price of a colorless D flawless
stone. Out of every 100 colored
diamonds found, there is only
one of truly fine color. Plus
there is a lot of money around
looking for good jewelry.’’
Alex Rhodes, Sotheby’s jew-
elry expert, welcomes the increased
competition for colored diamonds
among private buyers. ‘‘Private collect-
ors at that level are usually connois-
seurs of art with sophisticated, highly
educated tastes. They buy a jewel as a
work of art. Choosing a colored dia-
mond goes way beyond the usual clas-
sifications, it is about the intensity and
subtlety of color, and the way it plays
with the fire and brilliance of the stone.
It demands a special understanding.’’
Clearly this is where the element of
connoisseurship comes in, but colored
diamonds, each intensely personal,
also provoke a powerful emotional re-
sponse.
‘‘There is a passion involved here,’’
confirms Kirtley, ‘‘a strong emotional
element, and the more collectors un-
derstand, the more passionate
they become. With a colorless
diamond, the criteria are easy to
understand, but the subtle nu-
ances of color, and then the
emotional reaction are not
quantif iable.’’
One man who understands
the emotional pull and the lan-
guage of diamonds is Laurence
Graff, who handles approximately 60
percent of the world’s output of yellow
diamonds, not to mention some of the
world’s most important blues and
pinks. He says his signature yellow dia-
monds come mainly from South Africa,
while many blues are sourced in An-
gola and pink diamonds come from
Australia and Brazil.
Prices reflect this scarcity. Graff re-
cently sold the Golden Star, a fancy
vivid yellow cushion cut diamond of
more than 101 carats, in a deal that net-
ted more than $12 million.
Nir Livnat, chief executive of Stein-
metz, one of the world’s most promi-
Stephanie Kuykendai
dials, can make their orders months in
advance of the arrival of stock and re-
quest worldwide hunts for coveted rare
accessories.
‘‘I had two of my best clients
call the day after the Fendi
show in October and say ‘I
want the Message from the
Past bag from look 46,’ ’’ says
Ganes, who will soon be mak-
ing some of his best clients
very happy when he rings them up
to say the bags have finally arrived.
Jessica Michault is on the staff of the
International Herald Tribune.
Laurent Gillieron/Keystone/The Associated Press
nent diamantaires, has brought some
of the most mesmerizing colored dia-
monds to market in recent years, in-
cluding the monumental Steinmetz
pink, and a Midnight Blue collection.
‘‘Ten years ago, we had traditional buy-
ers, Middle Eastern royalty, very
wealthy Europeans. Today, the appeal
has broadened considerably to include
the Far East and countries like India
and Russia that have a strong diamond
tradition and understand the finesse of
the colored diamond,’’ he says.
The cutting of a colored diamond is
crucial, so crucial that Livnat super-
vises the process. ‘‘It is not only about
luster, but about color saturation and
how the light travels differently
through the color. Each colored dia-
mond is a challenge. Each stone has to
maintain its own personality,’’ he says.
Needless to say, rare colored dia-
monds take center stage in the inaugu-
ral collection of Sotheby’s Diamonds, a
salon-style retail venture in which
Steinmetz partners Sotheby’s. The col-
lection is being launched in New York
and Hong Kong this month, aimed at
the world’s top jewelry buyers.
Marc Auclert, Sotheby’s head of jew-
elry for Europe and Asia, who is over-
seeing the collection, drools over the 11
carat chewing-gum pink diamond, the
5 carat fancy deep blue pear-shape, and
the 1.70 carat emerald-cut red. Auclert
comments, ‘‘There are probably 20
people in the world, 50 at the most, ca-
pable of buying at this level.’’
At more affordable levels, the desire
for colored diamonds is being dissem-
inated by jewelers like David Morris
and Hirsh of London, and Chatila, who
is exhibiting his range of museum-
quality diamonds, for the second year,
at this week’s Dubai Watch and Jewelry
Fair. Jeremy Morris, designer at David
Morris, London, is composing one-of-a
kind sautoirs of vibrant multi-colored
diamonds. The first sautoir was sold to
a Middle Eastern princess, to be
worn on her wedding day.
Even contemporary minim-
alists like London’s Cox &
Power are playing with dia-
mond colors, hanging beads of
gray or brown diamonds, with a
serene yellow or pink diamond
pendant. A new design-driven,
fashion-forward element is
creeping in.
De Beers’ new Talisman collection
features rough colored diamonds in
warm, earthy tones set to look as if they
are oozing, organically, out of soft, tex-
tured gold, or clustered into random
pools of shimmering light and shade.
These are aimed, explains the De Beers
CEO, Guy Leymarie, at showing the
natural diversity of diamonds. ‘‘This is
a strong trend, which shows that not
only are diamonds magical stones, but
they are also a part of fashion.’’
Vivienne Becker is a jewelry writer for
Harpers & Queen, UK.