The World of Damiani Jewels Trendy yet Eternal

The Damiani Group, Italy’s leading jewellery company, is known as much for the timeless elegance of its jewellery, across the board as much as for its iconic brand value. Giorgio Damiani, Vice President of the Group, fields some questions from Nilan Singh about the company, its design sensibilities and brand building.

Could you please give us a brief background of the Damiani company?

The Damiani story started in Valenza in 1924, at the heart of an area considered as a global centre of excellence for jewellery production.

The founder, my grandfather Enrico began designing and producing diamond jewellery so beautiful and elegant that his fame as a master goldsmith was soon established, gaining the trust of the most important local families and laying the foundations for what has become an international Group.

My father, Damiano, continued the family tradition with great creativity and strong entrepreneurial spirit, focusing on design and promoting technical innovations.

I joined the family business in 1994 taking care of the sales network in Italy and marketing, experimenting with the introduction of new strategies and making significant contributions to development.

We are now in our third generation: my brother Guido is both President and CEO of the Group, while I and my sister Silvia are Vice Presidents of the Board and take care of different areas of the business.

Damiani is a very strong brand that is growing worldwide. In Italy it enjoys a leadership position in the jewellery market in terms of both sales and brand awareness, both through the retail channel and though the wholesale one.

Our next challenges will definitely be linked to an international context with consolidation of markets where we are already present and development of new ones. The Group is very interested in branching out in the foreign markets, especially the emerging ones that seem to be very responsive and interested in jewels and in Made in Italy, such as China and Central and South America.

The recent opening of our second Damiani boutique in Macau (One Grand Central), one in Ning Bo (Haishu District) and three Rocca boutiques (Rocca is a chain leader in Italy in the high-end jewellery and watches retailing and totally controlled by our Group), in Cancun, Mexico is a further step towards the international expansion strategy.

The Damiani Group is also looking for selected partners to better penetrate the Indian market with its brands. Moreover, the Group could consider possible Joint Ventures also in Italy.

Today, the Group has 79 points of sale worldwide, located in the major Italian and international shopping streets. These include boutiques in Milan (Via Montenapoleone), Rome (Via Condotti), Florence (via de’ Tornabuoni), Paris (Place Vendôme), London (Old Bond Street), New York (Madison Avenue), Tokyo (Ginza) and Los Angeles (Rodeo Drive).

What is the product development/design process involve in the company?

All Damiani jewellery pieces are hallmarked by a very high design content. This is generated by the Group’s creative team, which is capable of optimally combining the mastery of its craftsmen, the spirit of innovation and aesthetic taste, making every creation unique and unmistakable, always with a close eye on the women that are going to wear our jewels.

Damiani is today the highest expression of high-end Italian jewellery, recognised and appreciated worldwide, thanks to its history, craftsmanship and care for details, design and innovation. We are always committed in trying to convey these values through our jewels, because our aim is to communicate dreams as well as those certainties that only an exclusive brand is able to deliver.

With our collections we want to satisfy our customers to the best we can. They are refined international customers, regardless of their nationality, who, when buying luxury goods, look for quality, creativity and craftsmanship and, most of all, an increasing value over time. That is why, Damiani offers both masterpieces and smaller jewels, always taking into high consideration the manufacturing details, the proportions and the quality of the gems, to suit the consumers’ needs in every single detail.

What is the inspiration for the jewellery/ for the jewellery designers?

In jewellery there is nothing more to be invented, so the strategy of Damiani consists in offering high quality jewels, concentrating on our Must collection, with great success since many years (for example, to celebrate the D.Side collection 10th anniversary in 2010 we have developed a new solitaire ring, or the enrichment of Belle Epoque collection with the Belle Epoque Watches, a great launch in September 2010 Basel Fair).

Behind this, I have to say that each jewel hides a secret: that of the person who wears it. That is why, each time we begin the creative process for a new jewellery line, we think about those who are going to have it, imagining their habits, their desires, objects they’re surrounded by and that they love. Situations, moments, atmospheres. It is from them that we draw our ideas and our style: a style customers can recognise as their own, reflecting their own lifestyle.

What is the philosophy behind Damiani jewellery?

Our jewels stand out due to their excellence; an excellence based on quality, on experience and on the value of the Made in Italy manufacturing, these are the values that we inherited from our father and grandfather. And a great passion for our work, which is also our world. We maintain our spirit as innovators with design that is always meticulous and deeply rooted in tradition, with a very high quality of gems and manufacturing precision: Damiani jewels express the equilibrium that makes all our collections eternal.

What are the main characteristics of Damiani’s jewellery designs?

The jeweller is an artist even if his fantasy is enclosed within limits: from a thematic point of view, there’s little to invent, but there’s a lot to render, re-evoke, quote. Quality of the materials and of the gems, goldsmith skills, design harmony and balance, tradition, stylistic research and innovation, capability to create jewels that can be worn today and, at the same time, desired and loved in the future. Every great jeweller is insensible to trends: this doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be inspired by the trends of the moment, trends drive the creation of new collections, but don’t erase the print of tradition. The jewellery creative process is global and universal: past and future invent the present.

In all these years we have managed to combine the techniques of gold jewellery production, artisan by definition, with the capacity to create jewels in line with current trends yet perfect for everyday wear.

Every jewel is a piece of art, particularly because it has to be something that enhances the beauty of the woman wearing it, making her feel unique, precious, elegant and refined every single day of her life and not only in particular occasions.

That is why we maintain our spirit as innovators with design that is always meticulous and deeply rooted in tradition, with a very high quality of gems and manufacturing precision, but trying to experiment new trends and to create jewels with different gold colours, such as in the Metropolitan Dream collection, an innovative, eclectic, modern, chic design collection available in four different shades of gold – yellow, pink, and the unusual black and brown. This is a collection designed for a woman who cares about fine detailing and the latest trends. A protagonist of the city and its fast life, she’s a trend-setter with a keen eye for details.

Behind this, we keep guaranteeing the value of our creation, in fact now every Bridal or solitaire ring is enhanced by the “Damiani Guarantee System” which certifies the characteristics of the diamond – colour, carats, gem certificate number – by means of an exclusive engraved mark inside the band of the ring and on the gemstone girdle.

. Which do you consider to be the main collections of Damiani jewellery today? What is the particularity of each collection?

There are definitely two Damiani collections that can be considered as the most important and representative ones: Paradise and Metropolitan Dream.

Paradise is inspired by starry skies and by celestial constellations in a supreme combination of gold, diamonds and precious stones evoking the magic, rarefied atmosphere and sparkle of suggestive natural Paradises.

This collection is dedicated to women who dream about ‘touching the sky with a finger’ through its distinctive features: volume, light and colour. Standing out for the specific design effect and evocative craftsmanship of diamonds and precious stones, with claws and inset to create that special starry sky effect. Each jewel’s volume and roundness, bringing to mind the lines of imagined, distant celestial bodies, has unprecedented inborn elegance, class and allure.

Perfectly representing the Damiani brand and its skill in speaking a modern language without forgetting traditional quality, the Metropolitan Dream collection stands out for texture craftsmanship, a result of how Damiani’s master goldsmiths know how to apply their techniques.

New Metropolitan Dream bracelets in pink, black, brown and yellow gold with diamonds and Metropolitan Dream precious, original cufflinks, available in the four shades of gold and dedicated to the metropolitan man, created to celebrate the great success of the collection on its first anniversary, are the extension line’s true feather in the cap; refined and elegant, perfectly in line with the spirit and features that have made this line a success.

What would you say are the best selling pieces of Damiani?

Damiani has always been a synonym for top quality. Quality for us does not mean just excellent materials, but also special attention paid to the design and production of our jewels. Our collections offer masterpieces but also smaller pieces. Among the best sellers I can quote the Belle Epoque collection, a real must, that keeps being enriched by new versions and new combinations of different shades of gold and gems, last but not least, the New Belle Epoque Watches collection presented in 2010; Sophia, inspired by the famous icon Sophia Loren, that gives tribute to the theme of circle and Juliette, a rose-cut diamonds collection, homage to liberty style and fin du siècle atmosphere.

What would you say are the trends for the coming year?

Damiani pays great attention to new trends to satisfy at best customers’ needs, but yet always creating refined and sophisticated eternal jewels. We like the wow effect, we want to surprise our customers with the new collections at the upcoming Basel Fair in March.

Could you tell us a little about the iconic pieces designed for celebrity clients of Damiani? Are there any anecdotes about particular pieces of jewellery?

Damiani has a special relationship with the celebrity world, since we were the first to choose testimonials and to believe that this kind of communication is fundamental for establishing and increasing brand awareness.

Isabella Rossellini, Chiara Mastroianni, Brad Pitt, Nastassja Kinski, Milla Jovovich, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sharon Stone. These are very different characters that however share the same talent, class and an inbred natural elegance that teams well with the unusual aesthetic sensibility and values of our brand.

They are often friends of the family even before we set up a working rapport, as in the case of Sophia Loren, the muse for the Damiani collection that bears her name, who has chosen to wear our jewels on various special occasions in her life.

Or in the case of Sharon Stone, with whom we also shared an important humanitarian project: The Clean Water Project. It is born out of the desire to make a tangible contribution to the African peoples, both in economic terms as well as in increased awareness by involving the media and public opinion.

I cannot tell which campaign is unforgettable, because we always select for testimonials celebrities who represent the world of our brand and who, over time, become family friends before being just testimonials.