How to develop a jewellery icon

The 243-year-old house of Chaumet is perhaps best known for its very expensive tiaras. But, this year, it is turning up the volume on Bee My Love — a collection that alludes to the shape of the beehive, with prices from €1,090 for a plain gold ring to €98,600 for a diamond-studded fluid cuff.

The range is part of the category that jewellers refer to as “icon”: a design that distinguishes a brand, encapsulates its narrative, and often serves as an entry point for customers. Most importantly, though, icons are the foundations on which brands build their businesses. High jewellery cannot provide such steady cash flow — it might sprinkle some stardust on the balance sheet but it typically accounts for only 20-40 per cent of a brand’s total turnover.

“Bee My Love is at the heart of Chaumet’s narrative, as it is a reference to the empire and the origin of the house,” says chief executive Jean-Marc Mansvelt. Napoleon Bonaparte chose the bee for his personal coat of arms, thus lending legitimacy to his rule through a symbol used by the Merovingians between the fifth and the eighth century, at the same time breaking with the preceding House of Bourbon, symbolised by the fleur-de-lis, or lily.

Alongside Bee My Love, Chaumet also counts Joséphine and Liens as signature styles supported with promotional activities and new reinterpretations. “Building an icon requires discipline,” says Mansvelt. But he is conscious that the brand’s commitment is just part of the equation. “An icon is the choice of clients; only the client can make an icon successful, which is the paramount reason for a design to become iconic,” he adds.

Indeed, some of the most recognisable jewellery icons were born not as part of a strategy, but out of their commercial success.

In her book The Cartiers, Francesca Cartier Brickell, great-great-great-granddaughter of the house’s founder Louis-François Cartier, writes that the Trinity design, made of three intertwined rings in rose, yellow and white gold, was initially born as a ring commissioned by French poet and artist Jean Cocteau. Now, almost 100 years later, the £720 Trinity silk cord bracelet is one of the most affordable Cartier pieces — a crucial element for a successful icon.

“The younger generation, in particular, is interested in having iconic pieces to showcase their social status,” says Alexander Thiel, a partner at management consultancy McKinsey in Switzerland. “They prefer to save money to buy their first luxury product and then look to get something iconic and high-end.”

But the Parisian house’s most successful icon is undoubtedly Love, initially launched in 1969 as a set of matching bracelets for a couple. “We have estimated Cartier’s revenues to be just shy of €10bn; the Love range is likely to be as much as 20 per cent of that,” says Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC.

The Love collection may not tell us much about Cartier’s history, but it references in its name and design — the bracelet can only be undone with a special screwdriver — the sentiment that lures many first-time customers into a jewellery store.

Cartier supports the collection with advertising, such as the latest “Love Is All” campaign. However, chief executive Cyrille Vigneron hints that the success of an icon is more down to art than method. “Icons’ desirability and brand desirability are part of the same exercise,” he argues. “It involves all activities, and there is no recipe for it.”

Regardless of whether there is a secret recipe, Rambourg believes two ingredients are essential: “time and money”.

A more calculated approach lies behind Bulgari’s three icons — Diva, the colosseum-shaped B.zero1, and Serpenti. “They are all very young icons, so we could decide that we wanted them to embody a strong narrative linked to the city of Rome,” says the company’s chief executive, Jean-Christophe Babin.

Although the first Serpenti designs date back to 1948, it was only in 2010, with the introduction of more affordable pieces, that the style lifted both the brand and its business.

“The idea of Serpenti has verticality and horizontality; it’s distinguishable across various price points, and . . . its shape works well as a ring, bracelet, necklace,” Babin says. The Serpenti Viper range featuring a streamlined snake (with a starting price of £1,200 for a rose gold ring) launched two years ago is, according to the house, already delivering strong results.

“In an industry still dominated by unbranded players, having an icon is paramount,” says Rambourg, so much so that launching a jewellery brand almost requires the creation of one distinctive design.

London-based Lily Gabriella Elia — who, through the Talisman collection, offers a taste of her bespoke service at an accessible price — agrees. “Iconic designs are aspirational pieces, which can raise the profile of a smaller brand and set them apart from global brands.”

Iconic designs are aspirational pieces, which can raise the profile of a smaller brand and set themselves apart from global brands

In response, established houses have been releasing more new signature designs and intensifying their investment to support them. Look no further than Tiffany & Co’s bombastic launch of Lock, with multichannel advertising and a social media campaign.

Alexandre Arnault, the company’s executive vice-president for product and communications, considers Lock’s sales performance to have been “widely successful across the globe”.

But can icons become victims of their own success? While Thiel at McKinsey warns about the risks of “overexposure” and “wrong exposure”, Cartier’s Vigneron says: “Some icons reach this status linked with rarity, like [Cartier’s] Crash watch, so it cannot be overexposed. Some other icons, symbolic and universal, gain power when seen more.”

Either way, icons are essential for a brand’s image and its business, because, as Vigneron puts it, “icons make iconic brands”.