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.”
