The 2008 edition of the January Vicenza jewellery fair served as the platform to showcase two interesing perspectives on how the jewellery industry should tackle an uncertain future. A fundamental issue for some time now has been what to develop as the emotional hook jewellery needs to reach out to consumers who are no longer enamoured of the idea of intrinsic value and are therefore not motivated enough to buy jewellery.
A Vicenza Fair-sponsored international jewellery design competition titled ‘Contemporary Italian Jewellery: techniques and materials through art and design’, highlighted the idea of design and its relevance to contemporary aesthetics as the means to developing that special something to appeal to the consumer. Alba Cappellieri, professor of jewellery design at the Milan Polytechnic faculty of design, who curated a show of shortlisted competition designs made the point that the relevance of design was what gave jewellery that special appeal. The intrinsic value of the material used, though of significance, wasn’t necessarily paramount.
Staying relevant matters because through relevance, a design echoes many ideas and themes that are dear to a person. A piece of jewellery might resonate with the wearer’s strongly held beliefs about ecology, fair trade or anything else besides also making a personal style statement. There is a good case to say that relevant contemporary design could provide that something extra needed to entice the consumer away from the other luxury products crowding the marketplace today.
But while all of this might be clearly the way forward, there is also a need for an immediate fix. A global industry still hugely dependent on the allure of gold needs something to keep it going in the interim. There were again some interesting solutions that came up with the Italian edition of the World Gold Council (WGC) ‘Gold Expressions’ worldwide jewellery design initiative. Daniela Invernizzi, the WGC’s Italian representative, explained how technology had been used by the Italian jewellery industry in the form of new, lightweight alloys and surface texturing systems along with the creative use of hollow tube chains and large design motifs with large amounts of open spaces in them to present bold fashion statements that nevertheless catered to the economic realities of the marketplace. Chains and fringes were in vogue now because they were more flexible and open to tweaking in design, according to her.
Invernizzi thinks also that given the fluid economic situation, there was added assurance in fabricating jewellery from gold rather than any other material. “Gold,” she said, “safeguards the consumer more than say steel in that it will appreciate the value of the piece.” She adds that the majority of Italian manufactured jewellery was unbranded and so intrinsic value does have a substantial role to play. In addition to all this, she thinks jewellery today can’t be just sold and then forgotten. Today, service is an extremely important element in the distribution and sales of jewellery. Service starts with the extras the manufacturer might provide the distributor or retailer in terms of tweaking designs for specific clients, shortening delivery times for special occasions, etc., and goes on to what the retailer provides the consumer in terms of standing behind the product for repairs or cleaning and many other variations that might also include trade-ins.
Apart from sheer economics though, Invernizzi says gold also has an emotional appeal in that most women responded to a survey by saying, “gold makes me feel good”. She goes on to say, “Every woman has a piece of jewellery that is dear to her – maybe something her mother used to own or gave her – and an iPod doesn’t have that sort of appeal.

Invernizzi: Service is important today.

Vicenza Makeover
The Vicenza show is, in a way, a great forum for jewellers to test the waters with their ideas on how to address this fundamental issue. In fact, the show has undergone a complete reorganisation and has renamed itself to present the look of an international forum where such issues might be tackled in a practical manner. The makeover has the show moving away from being just the apex show of the Italian industry and repositioning itself as the year’s trend-setter for the global jewellery industry. The show’s new name, First, is in keeping with this ideal. According to a show management statement, the show has evolved from “a generalist trade fair to protagonist in a sector – luxury and lifestyle – with strong leadership ambitions.”
With 67,000 square metres of exhibition space and 1,662 exhibitors from Italy and 30 other countries, the show is indeed something of a sampler for the year. And the global industry had its eyes on the 2008 edition to see if any of the ideas tested here would work.
And ideas there were in plenty. The most opted-for route was the substantially increased use of coloured gemstones. This adds a great deal of colour and has the beneficial effect of reducing gold content as well. In keeping with the spirit of maintaining emphatic style statements, the gemstones used tended to be large and in a wide variety of colours. Diamonds tended to be used more as accents (see trend report for details, page 64).
Feedback from exhibitors indicates that business has evolved now to consist mainly of much smaller orders of specific designs with a high degree of service to the customer -- from tweaking designs at manufacturing to prompt back-up and support in case of consumer complaints. Customers also seemed to prefer suppliers who had a representative presence in their particular markets.