Jewelry collection

First jewelry collection from luxury lab-grown diamond startup Aether – WWD

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Aether Diamonds, a fast-growing lab-grown diamond company that harvests stones from carbon found in the air, is launching its first jewelry collection.

The Bombé collection includes rings, necklaces, pendants and bracelets made with its exclusive synthetic diamonds and yellow gold. It will be available to buyers directly through Aether’s site and represents an evolution for a brand which in recent months has added several high-profile executives to its advisory board, including Alain Bernard – the former director of Richemont for the North America and the recent founder of Abbey. Road advice.

While most lab-grown diamond brands encrust their stones in very classic jewelry, Aether deliberately veered in a more fashionable direction to further its self-proclaimed “luxury” positioning. Each coin is accompanied by a description of the number of months of carbon emissions that have been offset by the production of its Aether diamond components – ranging from one month to nearly 11 years of offsets, all calibrated to the average annual carbon impact of an individual.

Jenna Housby, Design Director, said of the collection: “We wanted to do something different with our product – everything [in lab-grown jewelry] was pretty generic and we wanted a strong design that creates handwriting for our product to tell a story. Housby was classically trained at Central Saint Martins and joined Aether after working in the workshops of Stephen Webster and Theo Fennell.

COO and co-founder Dan Wojno added, “We have a very special and differentiated history. Every diamond atom we produce was recently in the atmosphere and only we can tell. Because of our process and our history, our diamonds have their value.

Aether’s lab-grown diamonds command a higher price than the industry average, which he says is due to the expensive process of collecting carbon from the atmosphere. While the average 1-carat lab stone is now trading around $1,800, the Aether one is priced at around $4,500. Wojno said naturally mined, high-quality 1-carat stones trade for around $9,000, but that cost is rising rapidly due to inflation and the evaporation of the mined supply in Russia.

The label plans to hold an inventory of some of the most affordable pieces in the collection, while those higher up the price chain will be made to order. Wojno declined to disclose any brick-and-mortar retail plans, refusing the company to take a wait-and-see approach.

Aether has further distinguished itself in the lab-grown world for the size of the stones it produces. While most lab-grown diamond producers max out at 1 or 1.5 carats, Aether is working on cultivating 3.5 and 4 carat stones and plans to have 5 carat stones in their inventory. by the end of this year.

Wojno said growing stones of this size is extremely difficult. “The thing people need to remember with lab-grown diamonds is that you might think you’re getting a perfect stone every time, but it’s not like a toaster popping out a piece of toast perfect every time. When you go to bigger sizes, there’s more material and more stress on the material. It grows, so the bigger you get, the harder it is,” he said, while refusing to reveal where the company’s stone production laboratory is located in the United States.

In recent months, Aether has added a few heavyweights to its advisory board. Bernard, who was most recently appointed, is now joined by other executives, including former Tiffany merchandising director Pamela Cloud and Bucherer/Tourneau chief executive Ira Melnitsky.

Aether said the next big recruiting move is to add designers to Housby’s team.

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