Carlos Defex is the newest member of the Brilliance team, bringing with him a lifetime of knowledge and passion for jewelry. As the head of our custom jewelry department, Carlos will be working tirelesly to bring his own style and experience to Brilliance jewelry. The Brilliance Blog took some time to sit down with Carlos so that you could get to know him better.
Brilliance Blog: How long have you been in the jewelry business?
Carlos Defex: I started in the jewelry business nearly 15 years ago when I received a bachelor’s degree in Metals and Fine Jewelry with specialization in Jewelry Design. The passion that I have for jewelry has taken me to different cities around the world, where I‘ve been exposed to different life styles and customs. I believe that my experiences shows in the caliber of jewelry that I design.
BB: What made you decide to go into jewelry?
CD: What I love about jewelry is the transformation of rare materials that are found deep beneath the earth through millions of years of evolution. To be able to transform those materials and give them an expression related to love and passion. I believe that jewelry is the perfect blend between science, art and nature.
BB: People obviously enjoy jewelry for the beauty and style, and you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of jewelry they are wearing. What can you say about different cultures and their jewelry?
CD: Jewelry has played an important role throughout the history of human kind, and has been a channel to communicate emotions, status, power, and beliefs. We can see it from the first Homo sapiens in Africa, barbarian tribes like the Celts, Mayans in Central America, or the Andean cultures in South America that created beautiful pieces of jewelry. India has probably the longest tradition of jewelry making and trading, dating back as far as the people of the Indus Valley Civilization more than 1,500 BC; also they were the first country that mined diamonds. As we can see, jewelry has been linked with the development of different cultures throughout the history and will be part of more generations to come.
BB: What do you find special about Brilliance, and what do you hope to add?
CD: Our jewelry is versatile, stylish, and at the same time shows a sense of tradition. It is made for the versatile woman that goes to work, takes care of the family, drives her kids to soccer games, and goes to a dinner party or cocktail at night; our jewelry is made to wear at any occasion. I believe that jewelry needs to be fun, enjoyable, accessible, and at the same time rare or unique.
BB: So we’ve heard about your passion for jewelry. Do you have anything to say about diamonds and other precious gems.
CD: I frequently hear from people, “it is only a rock”. And they might be right. But it is not just any rock…it is “The Rock”, whether we are referring to a loose diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire… these precious gems contain thousands of years of history, culture, and chemical and physical changes occurring deep within the earth. These are rare materials that symbolize a tradition, a special moment for the individual and the collective. Matched with the right jewelry, a precious stone can say who you are without words, a sensual piece of distinctiveness and self expression.
As the 50th anniversary marking Harry Winston’s donation of the legendary 45-carat Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Museum passes, the designers at Harry Winston have undertaken the challenge to design a new setting for the famous blue loose diamond. The goal was to create a piece that reflected the spirit of the American people. Three designs have been selected from dozens of sketches, and the winning design will be announced on September 23rd.
Watch a behind-the-scenes video below about the collaboration between the Smithsonian Museums and the Harry Winston designers who created the selected designs for one of the most famous diamonds.
GENEVA (Reuters) – A flawless vivid blue diamond weighing 7.03 carats sold Tuesday for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs ($9.49 million), the highest price paid per carat for any gemstone at auction, Sotheby’s said.
The rectangular-shaped blue stone, the rarest to enter the international market this year, went to an anonymous buyer bidding by telephone after hectic bidding see-sawed between two callers for 15 minutes.
It was the centrepiece of its semi-annual sale in Geneva, conducted by David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby’s jewelry department in Europe and the Middle East, who said the results showed the market’s resilience despite the economic downturn.
“This is already a new world record price for a fancy vivid blue diamond and a new world record per carat for any gemstone (at auction),” Bennett told reporters. See full article at reuters.com…
Just before Christmas, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department pried open a crate outside a warehouse to find something they had been chasing for months: an 840-pound Brazilian emerald that had been reported stolen.
Now, if they could just figure out who owns it. So far, at least five people have come forward to say it’s theirs.
“It seems like the more we talk to people, the more people claim to have ownership over this thing,” said Lt. Thomas Grubb, who heads the sheriff’s investigative team on the case. “We haven’t determined who’s not a suspect, really.”
Unable to determine who the real owner is, Lt. Grubb decided to keep the emerald locked up while the investigation proceeds. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles civil court is scheduled to hear from different claimants in the case on Tuesday.
Lt. Grubb, who had spent the bulk of his 26-year career conducting narcotics investigations, first got onto the case last September. A distraught man named Larry Biegler had called the sheriff’s office to say that his giant emerald had been stolen from a Los Angeles-area warehouse where he had been keeping it. It was worth nearly $400 million, he said.
Lt. Grubb’s detectives began investigating.
The emerald, they determined, was in the possession of two businessmen named Todd Armstrong and Kit Morrison, whom detectives tracked to a small town called Eagle, in western Idaho. When the detectives arrived in Eagle, Mr. Armstrong was in the process of trying to sell the emerald to a buyer. “We’ve run into a small snag,” Mr. Armstrong says he told his buyer.
The Idaho men said the emerald belonged to them. They said in an interview they paid Mr. Biegler $1 million for diamonds he never delivered. Mr. Biegler had put the emerald up as collateral, they say, for the stones. When the diamonds didn’t materialize, they picked up the emerald from the warehouse in Los Angeles. They showed investigators a stack of documents they said prove their claim. See full article at wsj.com…
Victoria’s Secret’s Miami fashion show had all the usual stars and glamour, but all eyes were on one very unique lingerie piece. Model Adrianna Lima was adorned with a 5 million dollar bra named the Black Diamond Fantasy Miracle Bra. Totaling 1500 carats of diamonds and rubies, the stunning display of diamonds surpassed the glamour of the 68 sexy outfits displayed at the show.
A true masterpiece, the bra is set with 3,575 black diamonds, 117 round cut 1-carat loose diamonds, 34 rubies, and two stunning black diamond drops. This behind-the-scenes video provides insight into the conception and creation of this designer bra.
New York—A sun-soaked penthouse studio in Greenwich Village was ablaze with every conceivable hue on Monday when the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) gave editors a preview of the winners and the runners-up for its 2009 AGTA Spectrum Awards, which spotlight the beauty and diversity of colored gemstones.
Financial world chaos and extreme market volatility have pretty much sidelined the vast majority of the juniors in the diamond mining sector, according to RBC Capital Markets’ highly regarded diamond analyst Des Kilalea. The senior players remain solidly in the game—albeit in a rather defensive posture—and can anticipate strong price performance to return once the economic storm subsides.
New York—Two polished diamonds cut from the 316.15-carat “Ponahalo” diamond will be the highlights of Christie’s October auction.
Christie’s “Jewels: The New York Sale” is scheduled for Oct. 15 in New York and features diamonds of 102.11 carats and 70.87 carats, both cut from the Ponahalo diamond.
The Ponahalo diamond came out of De Beers’ Venetian mine in 2005, and is the largest stone ever to emerge from that mine.
Jonathan Oppenheimer of De Beers named the diamond: Ponahalo means “vision” in Sotho, the tribal language spoken by the tribe in the area of South Africa where the stone was mined.
Thirty nine round cut diamonds are pave set in this white gold diamond engagement ring setting, accenting your choice of center diamond. 3/8 carat total diamond weight.
(1) comment | Leave a comment