London-based jeweller Queensmith has noted increased client interest in unconventional diamond cuts and warmer colours as couples seek engagement rings that feel more individual.
The jeweller has identified old mine, moval, criss-cut, trapezoid and elongated hexagonal diamonds among the shapes attracting attention, alongside warm and coloured stones.
Laura Suttie, gemmologist and design expert at Queensmith, said antique-style diamonds had risen particularly strongly in popularity following the attention generated by Taylor Swift’s engagement ring. Old mine cuts date largely from the 18th and 19th centuries and were shaped by hand. Their individual proportions, chunkier facets and softer brilliance appeal to clients seeking character rather than the uniform appearance associated with modern brilliant cuts.
Queensmith is also seeing growing interest in movals, a hybrid of marquise and oval shapes. The cut retains the elongated appearance that has made oval diamonds commercially successful while offering a less familiar silhouette. Elongated hexagonal diamonds have also risen in popularity.
Criss-cut diamonds provide another variation on an established category. Developed by cutter Christopher Slowinski in New York during the 1990s, their intersecting facets introduce more light and movement into the clean geometry of a traditional step cut.
The jeweller said some clients are also embracing diamonds with visible yellow, brown or champagne tones. These warmer stones can offer greater individuality as well as a lower price than equivalent diamonds in the colourless grades, making their appeal both aesthetic and financial.
Cuts previously used principally as supporting stones are also moving towards the centre of designs, according to Suttie. Trapezoid diamonds can create the impression of greater overall size, either as centre stones or by visually extending a central diamond when used as a matched pair. This allows clients to add impact without paying to increase the carat weight of the principal stone substantially.
Japanese jewellery emerged as one of the most visible creative forces surrounding Paris Fashion Week this season, with brands participating at the Week’s various trade shows and a dedicated exhibition at Sotheby’s.
What united many of the brands was a strong sense of materiality and craft. At a time when international buyers are looking for designs that can distinguish their assortments, this combination gave the Japanese jewellers in Paris an immediately legible point of difference.
At Sotheby’s Paris, Japan: Stillness and Substance presented contemporary Japanese jewellery through a cultural rather than purely commercial lens.
Curated by Sandrine Merle, founder and editor of The French Jewelry Post, the exhibition brought together work by Mariko Sumioka, Aya Iwata, Shinji Nakaba, Kimiaki Kageyama, Fumiki Taguchi, Manami Aoki and Takashi Kojima. It ran from 1 to 6 October as part of Parcours Bijoux 2026, the Paris triennial dedicated to contemporary jewellery.
Materials ranged from Japanese hinoki cypress and pearl oyster shell to enamel, silver, discarded plastics and centuries-old urushi lacquer. The emphasis was on the time spent and technical craft skills involved in each piece, positioning jewellery as collectible artistic practice.
For the Japanese designers selected by Merle, who discovered each jeweller during her extensive travels across the country, an exhibition within Sotheby’s offers access to the auction house’s established network of collectors. The exhibition ran during Sotheby’s Luxury Week, with visitors having to walk through the exhibition to access jewels that formed part of that sale.
Shinji Nakaba’s Müllgorgone brooch made of household plastics (left) and Aya Iwata’s Kumonoie – The Sky Grew Deeper brooch, both part of the Sotheby’s exhibition. (Sotheby’s/Yosuke Otomo)
Milamore gets nod from Anna Wintour
Milamore, meanwhile, reached Paris through both jewellery and fashion channels. Its founder George Inaki is a New York-based Filipino-Japanese designer who grew up in Japan, where Milamore’s fine jewellery collections are produced.
The brand exhibited at trade show GoldRush while simultaneously appearing at Americans in Paris, the CFDA showroom for the 10 finalists in the 2026 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Milamore was one of two jewellery businesses among this year’s finalists, with the other being the New York-based brand Juju Vera.
Legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s visit to Americans in Paris saw her stop by Milamore and engage Inaki in conversation about his work.
At GoldRush, Japanese jewellery brand Sixth Night attracted attention from buyers for jewellery incorporating wabori, a traditional form of Japanese hand engraving. The brand was established in 2025 by designer Yuka Tanaka as a development of her previous label, Muska, and opened a flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district the same year.
GoldRush also hosted Talkative, a contemporary fine jewellery brand founded in Japan in 2008 by designer Shinobu Marotta – a particular highlight of its presentation were its Crest earrings of carved gemstones. Poly Things, a Tokyo-based brand founded by designer Tetsuya Fujimoto, was also part of the showroom, and presented colourful, playful charms, and irreverent designs such as a silver and cord necklace designed to mimic wired iPhone headphones.
At NouvelleBox, buyers were introduced to two Tokyo brands with contrasting approaches to metal. Founded by metalworker Tomohiro Sadakiyo and designer Yuka Inanuma, Hum produces each piece by hand in its Tokyo atelier, developing proprietary tools and techniques to create distinctive textures in silver, gold and platinum. Loro, meanwhile, is known for understated, sculptural silver jewellery for everyday wear.
At Melee, Ryui presented one-of-a-kind jewellery by designers Ryu Hinata and Yui Taira. The brand selects unconventional gemstones with natural inclusions that become the star of the designs.
The concentration of Japanese jewellery brands also reflects the growing importance of Paris Fashion Week for jewellery businesses. The Week attracts international fashion buyers, editors, stylists and luxury clients, and the expanding circuit of jewellery shows gives brands a way to access those audiences without appearing on the official fashion schedule.
Sixth Night engraved earrings (left) and a Ryui ring set with a rose quartz with diopsite inclusions. (Sixth Night/Ryui)
Long before a natural diamond becomes a jewel – or even takes shape deep within the Earth – its story begins among the stars. This October, De Beers will invite visitors to discover that hidden world through an immersive installation at Frieze Masters in London, as part of its autumn cultural programme.
Voyage Through the Diamond Realm, Chapter II: On the Birth of a Diamond will unfold across three rooms at Frieze Masters, held in Regent’s Park from 14 to 18 October. Bringing together art, geology, film and sound, the experience follows carbon as it transforms into a natural diamond, while also celebrating the craftspeople and creative traditions of Botswana, where many of De Beers’ natural diamonds are mined.
The installation begins with a five-metre handwoven tapestry by Shifron Mercury Studio, the Paris-based practice founded by artist-designers Goni Shifron and Gabrielle Laurin Mercury. Created using natural fibres from Botswana’s Okavango Delta, its richly layered surface evokes the geological depths in which natural diamonds form. Ceramic fragments inspired by the irregular contours of rough diamonds are woven into the work, alongside ostrich-eggshell beads.
The tapestry will be shown alongside 47 amulets commissioned by Botswana’s Mabeo Studio. The studio collaborated with 41 basket weavers, potters and wood carvers from across the country on the amulets, which were handcrafted from local materials and set with De Beers natural diamonds.
The making of the five-metre handwoven tapestry by Shifron Mercury Studio. (Shifron Mercury Studio)
Born in the stars, formed in the Earth
In the installation’s second room moving image, narration and an enveloping soundscape will tell the story of carbon travelling from its earliest iteration within ancient stars (carbon atoms were created inside stars and dispersed into space when those stars died) to beneath the Earth’s surface, where extreme heat and pressure worked to transform them to the coveted diamonds they are today. The film is narrated by actors Lucian Msamati and Kristin Winters, with voices and original work by artists including Mumsy Themba and Ecka Mordecai.
The final room promises the installation’s most mesmerising encounter. Rough natural diamonds, still in the natural forms in which they emerged from the ground, will be illuminated by ultraviolet light. Some will glow an intense blue, revealing the phenomenon known as fluorescence.
This response to ultraviolet light is caused by minute variations within a natural diamond’s atomic structure. It cannot usually be seen under everyday lighting, making the display a rare opportunity to encounter an otherwise hard-to-catch characteristic of the stones.
De Beers fluorescent rough diamonds glowing blue under an ultra-violet light. (De Beers Group)
De Beers describes flourescence as “the secret within the stone”. It is an apt conclusion to an installation devoted to origins: beneath the familiar brilliance of a finished natural diamond lies a far older and stranger natural object, carrying evidence of a geological journey that began billions of years ago.
The installation is the second chapter in De Beers’ ongoing Voyage Through the Diamond Realm series. Its first Frieze Masters presentation in 2025 explored the myths and legends that natural diamonds have inspired across different cultures, and later travelled to Mumbai and New York.
The 2026 installation forms part of De Beers’ autumn cultural programme, which also included a partnership with Homo Faber in Venice this September. At Homo Faber, a biennial exhibition of contemporary craftsmanship held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, De Beers supported artists Abongile Sidzumo and Shakunona Parata in celebrating Southern African craft traditions through live leatherworking and basket-weaving demonstrations using locally sourced materials.
For a watchmaker with a client base that is reportedly 70% male, the new Royal Oak Joaillerie line could offer Audemars Piguet a pathway to a female customers – and access to a category currently showing greater momentum than watches.
Women buying for themselves accounted for 27.5% of Audemars Piguet’s clients in 2025, according to chief executive Ilaria Resta. She wants that to reach 40% over the coming years. Although the company avoids dividing its products into men’s and women’s categories, its new jewellery business could help close that gap without imposing gender labels on its watches.
The wider market makes the timing particularly interesting. Bain & Company described jewellery as the standout luxury category in 2025, estimating that sales increased by between 4% and 6% to €32 billion. Sales of new watches were broadly flat at an estimated €52 billion.
An Audemars Piguet craftsperson polishes the inside of a Royal Oak Joaillerie cuff. (Audemars Piguet)
Turning recognition into new revenue
Royal Oak Joaillerie allows Audemars Piguet to enter a different product category without having to build a fresh creative identity from the ground up. The collection translates the Royal Oak’s bracelet construction and geometric links into necklaces, earrings and cuffs, giving the jewellery immediate recognition among existing clients.
Client behaviour appears to have helped shape the decision. Resta told the Financial Times that customers had begun stacking multiple Royal Oak Mini watches as jewellery, while feedback from a Hong Kong client event in late 2025 influenced three pieces in the collection.
A bracelet from the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Joaillerie collection. (Audemars Piguet)
A controlled distribution test
The distribution model for Royal Oak Joaillerie suggests that the watchmaker is approaching jewellery cautiously. Pieces will initially be sold through private client events during a global tour rather than through its 25 AP Houses, with production kept limited and largely made to order.
This gives Audemars Piguet an opportunity to assess demand without taking on substantial inventory exposure. Private presentations can also strengthen relationships with top clients, giving the company greater insight into how its watch customers respond to jewellery and whether the category will find an audience beyond its existing collector base.
There is precedent for a family-owned watchmaker building a significant second business from jewellery. Chopard transformed the Happy Diamonds concept, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, from a watch design into an extensive jewellery proposition. Prior to the launch of the first Happy Diamonds jewellery collection in 1985, the brand was exclusively a watchmaker, and this year jewellery is generating more sales for the company than watches, according to an interview Chopard co-president Caroline Scheufele gave the Financial Times.
The Goldsmiths’ Centre has awarded £10,000 in grants to five independent jewellers, supporting investments intended to preserve specialist craft skills while helping small jewellery businesses become more commercially sustainable.
Aaron Caldwell, Aaron Whittingham, Heather Coleman, Helena Palmeira and Isabel Distassi will each receive a £2,000 Business Catalyst Small Grant, funded by the Goldsmiths’ Foundation.
The recipients will use the funding to acquire specialist equipment, undertake technical training and improve how their work is presented and sold.
Caldwell, founder of AJC Goldsmith, will invest in a refurbished laser welder to undertake complex repairs in-house, reducing external costs and turnaround times. Coleman will acquire specialist tools and training to expand her repair, restoration and engraving services, while Whittingham will purchase a Durston drawbench and micro-plating unit to increase his own repair and restoration capabilities.
Palmeira will direct the funding towards stone-carving equipment, photography and digital development, strengthening both her practice and its presentation. Distassi will undertake advanced stone-setting and digital-rendering training, allowing her to pursue more technically complex bespoke commissions.
The recipients have previously completed mentoring, consultancy or business-diagnostic programmes through The Goldsmiths’ Centre. These additional grants are intended to help them convert the learnings into practical investments over the next 12 months.
Julia Skilton, grants and engagement manager at the Goldsmiths’ Centre, said: “Through the Catalyst grant, we’re supporting their strategic growth by helping them access specialist tools, equipment and training to develop their business and realise their potential.”
The Small Grants form part of a wider funding programme offered through the Goldsmiths’ Centre. Up to 10 of the £2,000 Business Catalyst Small Grants are available annually to UK sole traders and small businesses, while Business Catalyst Large Grants offer eligible jewellers, silversmiths and craftspeople up to £7,000 to develop skills, introduce services, diversify their work or enter new markets.
The Centre also offers Access Grants towards the cost of its training programmes and support of up to £3,700 for participants on its Jewellery Foundation Programme.
Previous recipients of the larger Business Catalyst grants include jeweller Ellis Mhairi Cameron, who used a 2024 grant to explore hand and pneumatic engraving with expert Sam James. In 2025, Katherine Brunacci received funding to study micro-pavé setting, helping her bring more production in-house, while Shivani Chorwadia, also a 2025 recipient, invested in advanced wax-carving and CAD training.
Paris Fashion Week’s October edition is becoming an increasingly important fixture on the international jewellery calendar, as dedicated trade shows and private salon events cluster around the city’s official schedule.
From 1 to 5 October, jewellery trade shows Melee, GoldRush and NouvelleBox are operating across Paris, while the inaugural Le Rendez-Vous event brings together French brands at the Jardin des Tuileries. The week has also included jewellery events and private presentations from major luxury houses including Dior to independent designers such as Bibi van der Velden.
The combined activity offers buyers travelling to Paris access to a sizeable number of designers, many of who have flown in from the US and Asia.
The arrival of Le Rendez-Vous gives the jewellery offer at Paris Fashion Week greater institutional weight. Created by French jewellery industry body Francéclat under its Émergence programme, the new trade event is designed to showcase French jewellery design and savoir-faire to domestic and international buyers during Fashion Week.
Melee Paris attracted a high number of first-time exhibitors to its October 2026 edition, including Nina Bukvic (left) and Alice Clarke (right). (Nina Bukvic/Alice Clarke)
Jewellery follows the buyers
The growth of Paris Fashion Week as an important moment in the jewellery trade show schedule reflects a blurring of the lines between fine jewellery and fashion, according to Lauren Wolf, co-founder of Melee.
“Buyers used to treat jewellery as its own category, separate from the clothes on the runway; now it’s all one conversation,” she says. “They want to see the full look, head to toe, and jewellery is finally part of that rather than an afterthought. On top of that, I’ve seen lots of report over the past year or two about jewellery being the strongest growing category of luxury spending ahead of bags so that’s sure to have turned some heads that maybe weren’t paying attention to it before.”
Melee first staged its Paris edition in 2022 and is presenting 14 jewellers this October, 11 of which are new to the show. It brings the intimate, highly curated model established for the main Melee show in New York to Europe. “For a lot of independent jewellers, especially smaller brands, getting in front of that kind of international audience is really hard and expensive,” Wolf says. “What we wanted with Melee was something more intimate, a space where buyers actually get to sit with the designer, look closely at the work and hear the story behind it.”
That intimacy can have direct commercial value for independent brands attempting to enter new markets. Paris gives them access to European and international retailers that can be difficult and expensive to reach through individual appointments or repeated overseas travel.
The GoldRush jewellery trade show in Paris. (GoldRush)
Travel budgets redraw the buying calendar
According to NouvelleBox founder Darren Hildrow, retailers are consolidating buying trips as travel and operating costs rise. For many European and Asian buyers, Paris offers an efficient opportunity to source fashion and fine jewellery within the same visit.
NouvelleBox is hosting 28 designers and has had registrations from retailers based in France, the UK, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Morocco and the US.
“Many European and Asian retailers are travelling less to the US because of cost, and European stores in particular are under pressure on travel spend, so they are concentrating their buying into fewer, more efficient trips,” says Hildrow. “Paris is that trip.”
Hildrow says the arrival of more American brands in the city offered further evidence of its growing international reach: “If American brands are crossing the Atlantic to meet buyers, that tells you where the international buyers are.”
GoldRush founder Valery Demure has been showing jewellery in Paris during the March and October markets for more than 20 years. She describes Paris as the most important market season for many European and Asian brands, particularly those unable or unwilling to maintain extensive show schedules across the US and Asia.
“Paris is very unique as it brings together the international community, which Milan, New York or London still don’t,” she says. “The most important fashion runway shows take place in Paris too. Let’s not forget that this drives a lot of press and buyers to Paris.”
October appointments can capture late holiday orders as well as purchases for delivery in January and February, according to Demure. She notes that some retailers travel to the city only once a year, making the autumn edition particularly important for maintaining international wholesale relationships.
Scenes from NouvelleBox, which holds trade shows for press and buyers during Paris Fashion Week. (NouvelleBox)
Critical mass creates its own competition
The expanding calendar strengthens Paris as a jewellery destination, but it also raises competition for press and buyers’ time. Designers are spread across curated trade shows, private hotel suites and maison events, creating an increasingly complex itinerary.
“Paris is definitely a complex and competitive place,” says Demure. “We wanted with GoldRush to create a ‘one-destination show for jewellery’, but it is not that straightforward.”
Many established designers continue to favour private appointments once they have achieved their desired distribution, she adds, forcing buyers to travel between multiple locations rather than sourcing from one or two central exhibitions.
Wolf, however, believes the collective attraction of the events outweighs the competition between them: “Buyers can see a lot of jewellery in a really short window, which gives them one more reason to actually carve out time for the category while they’re already there. There’s competition for people’s attention, obviously, so you have to give them a real reason to show up.”
For NouvelleBox, that reason is curation. “A critical mass of jewellery gives buyers a stronger reason to make the trip and to set aside time for the category,” Hildrow says. “The challenge is that buyers’ schedules are tight, so a show needs a clear point of view and a properly curated edit to earn its appointment.”
Red-carpet jewellery has shifted from a creative showcase into a heavily commercialised advertising channel that is increasingly inaccessible to brands without substantial budgets, according to former De Beers natural diamonds market lead Sally Morrison.
Speaking to journalist Rachel Garrahan at the NouvelleBox jewellery trade show in Paris on 3 October, Morrison said: “[Stylists attitude’s were] more about, ‘What’s cool and great that I can put on my client?’ and less about, ‘What kind of cheque can I get for my client?’. That has completely changed.”
When Morrison was director of the Diamond Information Center, the US public-relations arm of De Beers’ Diamond Trading Company operated through advertising agency J. Walter Thompson in the early 2000s, one of the biggest obstacles facing independent designers was the cost of insuring valuable jewellery. As a workaround, the organisation placed pieces under its own insurance, transported them to fittings and created Oscars suites stocked with jewels worth millions of dollars.
Morrison described how celebrity dressing has since developed into a structured commercial ecosystem between brands, stylists and talent, making access significantly harder for independent jewellers unable to fund red-carpet placements.
“All these red carpets have become advertising vehicles, and it’s part of that bigger jewellery industrial complex,” Morrison said. “I think it’s a shame because we had so much fun doing all these crazy, unpredictable things.”
That earlier freedom enabled ambitious commissions, including the seven-foot diamond sautoir designed by L’Wren Scott and worn by Nicole Kidman to the 2008 Academy Awards. The $7 million jewel reportedly contained around 7,500 rough and polished diamonds weighing 1,399 carats in total. Morrison said the stones came from Botswana, allowing the Diamond Information Center to connect a major red-carpet moment with a provenance story.
Morrison argued that such storytelling remains important today, but warned that responsible sourcing messages cannot rely solely on statistics or tugging at consumers’ consciences. “[Diamond marketing] has to be romantic and emotional,” she said. “It is a struggle for us as an industry to tell that story in a beautiful way.”
During the talk at NouvelleBox, she also forecast that the engagement-ring market would endure, although younger consumers would continue to challenge its established codes. She said that later marriages and less conventional relationships are increasing interest in “ceremonial jewellery”, unusual cuts, rough-shaped stones and designs that differ visibly from those worn by previous generations.
While diamonds have faced sustained scrutiny, Morrison said she believes the coloured-stone market now requires greater attention, describing parts of it as “cowboy country” because of fragmented supply chains and limited transparency. Her advice to designers was to question suppliers repeatedly about origin, and to treat traceability as a basic expectation rather than an attribute for which consumers will necessarily pay more.
Another commercial tension she identified for independent brands today was satisfying demand for personalised jewellery while building a scalable business. Technology, including AI, could help designers offer controlled variations of repeatable designs, she said, without losing the sense of individuality customers increasingly expect.
Ultimately, Morrison argued, jewellery must protect the emotional role that distinguishes it from other luxury categories, even with the rapid rise of new technologies and consumer groups with shifting priorities. “When you look in someone’s jewellery box, you can tell the story of their life,” she said. “Jewellery encapsulates emotionally meaningful moments.”
Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern has reaffirmed his commitment to keeping the Swiss watchmaker independent and family owned, identifying his two sons as its next generation of leadership.
Speaking at the opening of the Patek Philippe Watch Art Grand Exhibition 2026 in Milan, Stern said the event, which open to the public free of charge, was intended to communicate more than simply the company’s horological expertise.
“This is not only about watches, it’s about the legacy, it’s about the family-owned business, it’s about pleasure,” said Stern, who represents the watchmaker’s fourth generation of family leadership after joining the business in 1990 aged 20.
The statement carries particular weight in a luxury market dominated by publicly listed conglomerates. Patek Philippe is one of the industry’s largest remaining independent houses and has been owned by the Stern family since 1932.
The privately held company does not disclose its financial performance, but Morgan Stanley has estimated annual revenue at approximately CHF2.5 billion, as reported in the Financial Times. The watchmaker produces about 75,000 timepieces a year.
“I’m alone, I’m not part of a group,” said Stern during the event. “This is my challenge. This is my destiny, and it will also be the destiny of my two sons.”
His eldest son, Adrien Stern, has worked alongside him for approximately 18 months and attended the Milan opening. Stern said his younger son, Tristan Stern, is expected to join the company in about a year, adding further clarity to Patek Philippe’s succession plans.
The comments reinforce Stern’s previous insistence that the company is not for sale, despite persistent speculation about potential interest from major luxury groups. Family ownership allows Patek Philippe to take a longer-term approach to production, distribution and investment without the demands placed on listed companies by shareholders.
A display of antique timepieces within Patek Philippe’s Watch Art Grand Exhibition Milano 2026. (Patek Philippe)
Patek Philippe’s largest exhibition to date
The Milan event is the seventh edition of Patek Philippe’s Watch Art Grand Exhibition and, at 2,900 sq m, is the largest the manufacture has staged.
More than 500 timepieces are on display at the event at Milan’s CityOval venue, which was formerly known as the Palazzo delle Scintille. The exhibition spans historic watches, current collections, grand complications and rare handcrafts. Watchmakers and artisans are also working within the exhibition to explain the skills and production processes behind the brand.
The exhibition is open to the public free of charge until 18 October. It follows the Tokyo edition in 2023, which attracted approximately 74,000 visitors.
The Milan exhibition also provided the setting for the launch of Gondolo Ladies First, a six-watch collection designed to broaden Patek Philippe’s offer for women. Inspired by the landmark 2009 Ladies First Chronograph – the brand’s first in-house manually wound chronograph movement that unconventionally made its debut it in a women’s watch – the new jewellery watches have cushion-shaped cases, with guilloché dials and editions with complex gem setting. The entry-level Gondolo Ladies First watches are priced at approximately £30,000, making them the most accessible gold ladies models offered by the watchmaker.
To coincide with the Gondolo Ladies First collection, Patek Philippe launched a new campaign titled I Am. I Wear. The campaign, which has a dedicated room within the Milan exhibition filled with colourful fashion mannequins, uses bold pop colours and fashion-led visuals, signalling a relaxing of the formal marketing codes the brand is known for.
The campaign supporting Patek Philippe’s Gondolo Ladies First collection launch signals a move towards more fashion-led approach. (Patek Philippe)
Piercing jewellery brand Tish Lyon is tripling its presence within John Lewis, expanding from three concessions to nine by the end of 2026.
The rollout will mean the brand now has piercing studios in a quarter of John Lewis’s 36-store estate, providing a significant physical retail platform for its 14-carat gold jewellery, and its piercing and permanent jewellery welding services.
Studios are already operating at Oxford Street, Liverpool and Bluewater, as well as newly opened locations at the Trafford Centre, Edinburgh and Leicester. Further concessions will open in Cambridge, Reading and Glasgow during the coming months.
John Lewis said the expansion followed “significant customer demand” at the first three locations.
The deal demonstrates the growing commercial value of experiential jewellery services to department stores. Piercing and jewellery welding cannot be replicated online, giving customers a reason to visit stores while creating opportunities for additional jewellery purchases and repeat appointments.
For Tish Lyon, the concession model offers access to John Lewis’s national customer base without the cost and risk of developing a comparable standalone store network. Its presence within the department store also positions piercing as a premium jewellery service rather than a purely transactional treatment.
The expansion forms part of John Lewis’s £800 million transformation programme, which is intended to reposition its department stores as experience-led destinations. Other new and expanded partnerships span fine art, bespoke travel and preventative healthcare.
Demand for the retailer’s in-store advisory services increased by more than 5% during the first half of 2026, according to John Lewis. The company is using specialist operators to attract customers, increase dwell time and differentiate its stores from online-only competitors.
“Today’s shoppers want far more than products on shelves; they want inspiration, helpful expertise and extraordinary experiences,” said Katie Papakonstantinou, director of services and hospitality at John Lewis.
Beaverbrooks recorded broadly flat sales of £217 million and a 9% decline in underlying operating profit to £7.8 million during its latest financial year, according to figures reported by the Guardian.
The results suggest that consumer demand for jewellery and watches remained comparatively resilient, with group sales slipping by just 0.1%. Profitability nevertheless came under further pressure as the cost of operating a substantial store network increased.
Managing director Anna Blackburn attributed the decline partly to higher employer National Insurance contributions and increases to the statutory minimum wage. She called on the government to “give business a bit of a break” by not adding further costs for businesses as retailers prepare for the crucial Christmas trading season.
The retailer operates 56 Beaverbrooks stores, four luxury watch and fine jewellery boutiques under its Loupe fascia, and 22 mono-brand stores for watchmakers including Omega, Breitling, Tudor and TAG Heuer.
The group is continuing to invest despite the difficult cost environment. It recently opened its fourth Loupe boutique in Sheffield and plans to refurbish stores at Manchester’s Trafford Centre and Lakeside in Essex. It has also been investing in its online operations, product development and workforce.
The performance illustrates the widening distinction between sales resilience and profitability in UK jewellery retail. Consumers may still be spending, but rising labour and operating costs mean that stable revenue does not necessarily translate into stable earnings.
In its previous financial year, Beaverbrooks reported turnover of £217.3 million and operating profit of £8.6 million, with pre-tax profits of £340,000. The full-year results teased by the Guardian are yet to be filed.
