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SPECIAL REPORT
ETHICAL JEWELRY
34 l Basel 2009 l COUTURE International Jeweler
Style and
In the world of fine jewelry, doing good and looking
>> Victoria Gomelsky
Climate change is almost what the bomb was when I was a kid in
the ’50s,” Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York,
says when he walks onto the stage for the final presentation of
the 10th annual New York Fashion Conference. This year’s theme?
“Green: Sustainability, Significance and Style.”
Launching into a hilarious anecdote about his youth in Great Britain,
Doonan brings three days of panel discussions about weighty issues of
ecological and social import to a spirited, if irreverent, close. The gathering
has covered everything from the scourge of “dirty gold” to the
future of green fashion, and while the messages have been meaningful,
the energy in the room has, as with any extended event, gradually been
sapped from the room.
Doonan does his best to enliven the audience. In recalling his initial
resistance to decorating Barneys’ windows with an earth-friendly green
theme for the 2007 holiday season, he cuts right to the chase:
“Let’s face it — it can be a bit earnest at times,” Doonan says, referring to
the by-now obligatory need for companies to tout their green credentials.
“We added some style, humor and a bit of glamour in there,” he
continues, describing his own cheeky approach to the theme: windows
populated by elves clad in recycled Metro cards and a “Rudolph the
Recycling Reindeer” display made entirely of recycled aluminum cans.
“You don’t have to be earnest and super-crunchy. That’s the vibe I got
from people on the street. They were grateful that we’d married those
two concepts.”
By poking fun at the clichés of the green movement while simultaneously
honoring it, Doonan makes a strong case for luxury goods that are
at once stylish and socially responsible.
The high-end jewelry industry has had a similar awakening. Over the
past three to five years, the selection of high-ticket jewelry described as
either green, sustainable, ethical, fair trade, fair made, charitable, causebased
or “conscient luxury” has increased exponentially. The degree of
green chatter in the jewelry business, famous for its conservatism and
insularity, is today so great that it’s become abundantly clear even the
old-timers have embraced the zeitgeist.
Civic style URTH brand jewelry, including the pieces on this page designed by Stephen
Webster and the leaf pendants on the opposite page by Pippa Small, uses “ethical gold”
sourced from communities – including the one pictured at left in Tipuani, Bolivia – that are
expected to meet the firm’s fundamental values or agree to conform to them. In return, they
receive a portion of profits to improve their quality of life and mining practices. Ruff&Cut, a
New York-based jeweler that uses diamonds mined in Sierra Leone, takes a similar approach,
channeling its profits to local organizations such as the Muddy Lotus Primary School.
Tipuani community photo provided by Urth Solutions