Jewellery News

The effects of the financial crisis are beginning to be felt, especially in the US. In Oregon, you’ll find people driving up to the pawn shops to hand over their jewellery like diamond rings and other pieces so that they can pay their electricity bills or make sure they have enough gas in their tanks to drive around for the rest of the week or the month.

It’s not just jewellery that people are pawning – it’s happening with items like TVs and golf kits as well.

The women come in with their jewellery and their eyes full of tears. Sometimes they have diamond rings that have been passed down a few generations and it’s hard to hand them over. The pawn shop owners sometimes share their pain. The only consolation for these people is the fact that if they do manage to work and get some money, they can come and get their jewellery back. They wouldn’t be able to do that if they sold their valuables.

One such pawnshop called Silver Lining in Oregon trains its employees to be sensitive to people who come in with their valuables. The owner asks them to put themselves in the other person’s shoes when they deal with them. It’s heartbreaking for anyone to part with their personal possessions and people like these would never do that unless they had to. Yet, there’s hope when they leave their jewellery and other valuables in a pawn shop that one day they can come and get them back. It is this hope that keeps them going.

Delfina Delettrez presented her jewellery collection last Tuesday at Le Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris and it was quite an unusual presentation. She has always veered toward the unusual with skulls and skeletons being favourite themes for her work. This time round, it’s a bit different. Up till now, she worked mostly with enamel and silver. This collection sees a vast change.

Here’s what she did – she went and raided the cupboard where her grandmother kept the family silver. Then she arranged her jewellery very unusually indeed, on the family’s heirloom silver. The gold and diamond crocodile was one of the pieces she had displayed on cutlery and there were other pieces like a bat necklace that was arranged artistically on a cake platter.

Besides the jewellery, she also displayed her new sunglasses line which she is launching in collaboration with Alain Mikli. Spiders, bears, bats – they all dazzled and shone at the show.

Rumour has it that tennis ace Roger Federer was seen with his girlfriend Miroslava Varrivec shopping for a ring in Dubai. This took place apparently at the Atlantis Resort, the luxurious area that houses the famous jewellery store, Levant.

What exactly were they shopping for? A shopper said Roger was interested in diamond rings – and he was looking at the really large stones. One of the stones that were shown to him was a flawless D-diamond weighing 60 carats, the largest one the store had and the other was a pink cusion diamond which was 15 carats.

There’s a Film Festival on at Abu Dhabi this coming weekend and there are a whole host of celebrities crowding into Dubai’s super luxury hotels. Some of the ones spotted were Michael Douglas and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jane Fonda, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas and Susan Sarandon.

Roger Federer and his girlfriend have been together for some years now and she is always by his side whenever he plays to cheer him on. It is said that she’s the one who manages all the finances and does a good job of it. We wonder when the wedding bells will ring.

Last Saturday, the 23 year old actress got married to her boyfriend Ryan Reynolds in Canada at a very private ceremony with just family and friends. They got engaged last May but other than the diamond engagement ring on Scarlett’s finger they kept details about their relationship close.

Scarlett has been linked with Josh Hartnett earlier and Ryan was going out with Alanis Morisette for a while. He broke off with her in February and since then, he and Scarlett have been a couple.

The bride wore a Stella McCartney dress and they were not interested, like so many celebrity couples, to sell their wedding pictures to the press. The Lost in Translation star had recently said in an interview that she believed in waiting till she found a soul mate. This is a far cry from the actress who said that she didn’t believe in monogamy and than man wasn’t meant to be a monogamous creature. Ryan is a TV star and he is from Canada so it was natural that they got married in the place he loved.

Are Heather Locklear and Jack Wagner engaged? Well, we wouldn’t have guessed if Heather hadn’t been arrested for driving under the influence of drugs or drink. It happened in Santa Barbara and it was thanks to someone who saw her driving rather erratically who called the police. She was arrested and taken in for tests and it was found that what had affected her was not drink but prescription medication. She was let off after posting bail. And this arrest comes in the wake of a 4-week stint at an Arizona rehabilitation facility for depression and anxiety.

What was interesting about this arrest was the fact that when she was photographed, it was noticed that she had on an engagement ring – a diamond engagement ring. Obviously that was food for the rumour mills and now everyone’s wondering whether or not the couple are on the brink of marriage. There has been no word so far from either of them.

Heather has been nominated six times for the Golden Globe awards and has been a recognised TV star since her ‘Dynasty’ days. Jack has also been nominated for Emmy awards both for his role in ‘General Hospital’ as well as in the long-running American serial, The Bold and the Beautiful. He’s also a musician and his albums have done well in the popularity charts.

The news is that Jessica Simpson and her boyfriend Tony Romo are going to be getting married soon. Sources say that there’s a winter wedding looming ahead. Are Jessica Simpson and her current beau going to be married soon? This will be her second time.

The couple has been together for a year. The Dallas Cowboy quarterback has had a great season this year and it looks like he’s going to top it all by walking down that aisle. The end of the year will see the National Football League coming to a close for the year as well as the Super Bowl season.

Now let’s look at what happened to start off these rumours. Apparently the couple were looking at diamond encrusted wedding rings in Dallas. Now why would they be doing that unless a wedding was imminent? Well, that seems to be a good enough reason for the strong rumours so we should, in all probability, be looking forward to a wedding.

Jennifer Hudson, one of the finalists in the American Idol series a few years ago and Oscar wining star of Dream Girls had an engagement with a difference on her 27th birthday. This was the day she got engaged to her boyfriend David Otunga and was it a unique engagement!

In the first place, she wasn’t expecting it. So the proposal on her 27th birthday took her by surprise. They were on the beach and suddenly David gave her a purple shovel and asked her to dig into the sand. Purple, she says is her favourite colour. As she kept digging into the sand, she kept finding cards, each one with a message that related to the next. Till finally the one she found asked her to turn around because David had a gift for her. An engagement ring, of course!

Jennifer proudly displayed her diamond engagement ring for all to see at a recent TV show and it was obvious that she was ecstatic. She puts it down to him being such a beautiful guy – the reason why he is so? According to Jennifer, it’s because he’s an attorney from Harvard Law School!

Ever wondered how far your diamond travelled before it got to you? Diamonds are found in the earth or even in rivers or under the sea. When they are deep within the earth, they need to be mined and this can be very hard work, digging deep into the earth till they find these rough gemstones.

Most diamonds then make their way to Antwerp in Belgium as this city still reigns supreme when it comes to diamond trading. From here, it travels all the way to India where the stones are cut and polished, then back to Europe. When it comes to the rough diamonds, over 80% pass through Belgium and around 50% of the polished stones do too. So this really is the diamond hub of the world.

India has had a long legacy of diamond cutting and polishing, right from way back during the time of the maharajahs. Most of the work is done in three places: Gujarat, Mumbai or Jaipur. The exports last year were in the region of over £12 billion and it seems to be growing at about 20% yearly. There was a time when Antwerp was a cutting and polishing centre as well but more and more of this part of the diamond processing is moving to India.

So the next time you look at your diamond engagement ring, pause and ponder a moment as to the very long journey it has been on before it was set in a ring for your finger.

Whatever Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel do is news. Now when it concerns both of them and when they’re going to get engaged or married, it’s headline material. The trouble is, there are so many rumours floating around, there’s just no knowing what’s true and what’s not anymore.

Here’s the latest. Justin is said to have taken Jessica to Rome for a holiday and bought her a vintage diamond ring there. And where do you think this reportedly happened? In a tiny store in a little street where the jewellery is said to be mostly fine old vintage pieces. They can afford to have an unmarked store no doubt because they are so exclusive. According to the owner, the couple chose the ring as well as a vintage necklace and asked him to have it delivered to their hotel room. The diamond engagement ring is supposed to be a multi carat one.

You will no doubt remember the earlier rumours when it seemed that Justin was all set to pop the question and it was said he had bought Jessica a ring after having consulted with her friends as to what kind of a diamond engagement ring she would like. Nothing came of it so we’re not sure whether this rumour will go the way of all the others where this couple is concerned.