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For Light Lovers Only

Forevermark introduced jewelry featuring its new Black Label Collection at a media event in New York City.

By Amber Michelle

Painting by artist Angie Crabtree.

Deep in the heart of Chelsea, a New York City neighborhood known for its art galleries, Forevermark held a party at the Cedar Lake event space to showcase its new Black Label Collection of diamond jewelry. The soiree was attended by bloggers, influencers — defined as someone with a social media following of 10,000 or more — stylemakers, journalists and industry insiders. Guests who walked the red carpet included “We Wore What” fashion blogger Danielle Bernstein, stylist Arielle Nachmani, model Rachel Hilbert and Miss Universe 2012 turned actress Olivia Culpo.
   Black Label Collection diamonds are the Forevermark ideal cut diamonds. What makes this collection unique is that in addition to the classic round there are four fancy shapes — oval, heart, cushion and square. “Black Label Collection is the best representation of the most beautiful of our diamonds,” says Charles Stanley, president, Forevermark U.S. Inc. “It allows us to create an aspirational product, which jewelers want, and they can get a premium on those diamonds, which they also want.”
   According to Stanley, there is already consumer demand for these diamonds that Forevermark says are even better than a traditional Hearts and Arrows ideal cut. The demand has come about through print and digital advertising, which touts the tagline, For Light Lovers Only. “The jeweler has a point of difference to take away from commoditization of diamonds,” explains Stanley. “It helps retailers make better margins. We believe in value and the premium cut of these diamonds adds value, and consumers will pay accordingly.”
   Jewelry featuring Black Label Collection diamonds was on display during the party. Designers who are using these diamonds are the same ones already using Forevermark diamonds, including Jade Trau and A. Link among others.

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THE CUT
   “Black Label is a collection of the world’s most brilliant and symmetrical cut diamonds,” comments Traavis Ashburner, managing director, brand development and sales for HRA Group, a sightholder company based in Vancouver, Canada, that developed the cuts. He goes on to note that ten years of science- and math-based research went into developing fancy shape diamonds that are perfectly symmetrical. HRA Group owns the patents for these shapes. The firm has a partnership with Forevermark and sells its diamonds exclusively through them.
   The diamonds are cut in HRA’s two factories — one in Vancouver that employs about 350 cutters and another in Vietnam that employs about 700 cutters.
   According to Ashburner, who spoke privately with this writer during the event, Black Label is about reinventing the cut of fancy shapes to create more light return for a brighter, more sparkling diamond. It is something that he claims has never been done with fancy shapes before.
   “These diamonds are perfectly symmetrical. It is the symmetry of the facets that make these diamonds special. You could fold them into themselves and they would be perfectly even, the symmetry gives them a mirror image,” reveals Ashburner. “These diamonds push the boundaries of traditional fancy shapes.”
   The Black Label diamonds are geared to appeal to Millennials to give them something different, so Forevermark further distinguished these diamonds by naming the arrow pattern inside “Compass of Light,” a name they trademarked. According to Ashburner, this signifies that the gems are cut to a degree of perfection beyond ideal. “Ideal is a range of parameters,” says Ashburner. “But Black Label is an even narrower range of parameters.”

THE ART
   The featured guest for the evening was Angie Crabtree, a San Francisco, California, artist who creates paintings based on the facet patterns found when looking inside of a diamond, which are enlarged 1,000-plus times. She created four paintings for Forevermark — one for each fancy shape in the Black Label Collection. Taking her art one step further than usual, she did each of the works on a canvas in the shape of the stone she was painting. She believes that the shape is important to the cut of the stone and she wanted to highlight that aspect. Crabtree also observed that the Black Label diamonds are more reflective than most of the diamonds she paints. The four paintings were on display at the event. According to Stanley, Forevermark plans to auction off the paintings and donate the money to charitable causes in keeping with the company’s philosophy to give back.
   Crabtree talked to this writer at the party about how diamonds spark her creativity. “I’m inspired by the patterns and symmetry. I paint diamonds because they look like abstract art close up. I zoom into the inside of a diamond for a super close-up.” While she paints the insides of both antique and modern diamonds, Crabtree says she prefers to paint modern flawless diamonds because they have more sparkle.
   With 50,000-plus Instagram followers, Crabtree is well known by Millennials and she brings a conversation about diamonds to those followers in a nontraditional way. “I bring an interesting conversation to Millennials. I think that there are a lot of conversations about diamonds that are not up-to-date. The recent history and how diamonds have been portrayed in the media has brought some misconceptions. But the paintings open their eyes,” she concludes. 

Article from the Rapaport Magazine - December 2016. To subscribe click here.
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