With a store in London’s most prestigious retail borough, a design partnership with actress Sarah Jessica Parker, and access to some of the world’s rarest gemstones, it would be natural to assume Kat Florence comes from a well-entrenched jewelry family. But that’s not the case. In fact, just six years ago, the Canadian designer was working as a teacher.
During a stretch of educating young children in Thailand, Florence stumbled across the country’s jewelry manufacturing hub and fell swiftly and deeply in love. Not long afterward, she met her business partner — a “gem hunter” with more than three decades of experience seeking out rare and sought-after stones — and forged her eponymous jewelry brand.
Cooperative creativity
Florence has made her home in Thailand, where she lives with her two dogs, although she also spends a quarter of the year at a second home in Rome. In bustling Bangkok, she presides over her own atelier, staffed by 25 craftspeople. These skilled artisans transform her “terrible” sketches into glittering jewels, the majority of which are one-offs. She designs her pieces around unusual gems unearthed by a global network of dealers (she also has an office in Jaipur, India). About 90% of these stones are then recut in-house.
While her taste in colored gems is adventurous — at the height of the Brazilian paraiba tourmaline frenzy a few years ago, she amassed 67 of these rare gems, an almost impossibly large collection — Florence has a strict policy on diamonds. All, including those used for pavé, must be D-color and flawless. This commitment to quality shines through in her Flawless Diamond collection, on which she and Parker collaborated in a high-profile coup for the jeweler just a couple of years into the business.
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Sex and the City actress has also modeled for Florence via the photographic prowess of legendary photographer Peter Lindbergh, who described his experience with the women as “literally working with two gems.” Now, though, Florence is moving gently away from celebrity partnerships, gradually accepting that she no longer needs a face to sell her jewels — including her own.
“In the beginning, I felt I had to be there, selling my story,” says Florence, who is charming and engaging in person, especially when talking about her passion for gems. “I spent so much time doing personal appearances, but I feel the pieces are speaking for themselves now.”
An exclusive market
Due to the rarity of the gemstones, her jewels have a decidedly niche but engaged customer base. In March, she presented a collection of 180 designs featuring Russian emeralds 100 years old or more. She did not recut the gems for fear of changing their classifications. Almost half sold on debut in Germany and Austria.
Europe is where the Kat Florence brand really started, and remains its strongest market, although the US is its fastest-growing. The company sells its jewels through a distributor in Miami to private clients at trunk shows in Florida and New York, as well as through select retail partners.
Next up for the brand is the June launch of a collection set with vintage rose-cut, Jaipur-sourced diamonds that Florence says look like “drops of dew on a leaf in the morning.” Following that will be a “surprise” collection in September, about which she will say only that the hero gem is “hard to cut.” Whatever it might be, it’s guaranteed to be another showstopper.
Image: Kat Florence and her top picks.Article from the Rapaport Magazine - May 2018. To subscribe click here.