I’m confused re what Tiffany considers “fashion” jewelry?
I have never seen clarity/color listed on pieces on the Tiffany site and I’ve browsed intermittently for 6 years or so. But I’ve never looked at their stud earrings/solitaire pendants.
ETA: I have a gold ring and gold necklace I bought on Etsy and love to bits and the markup on those was nearly Tiffany-level. In fact, many small online jewelry brands have very high markups, on the level of Tiffany’s. Brands I’d never heard of before. So I guess I don’t find Tiffany’s prices shocking in that context.
I’m not really sure about what counts as fashion jewelry, either. The only example I can think of is keys. Because I remember in my local Tiffany’s old layout that the keys were split in two different cases. I didn’t think much of it, but one collection was upstairs and the other was downstairs. The downstairs keys had more metal and less diamonds — like the heart key, daisy key, and oval key. And I distinctly remember Victoria and enchant keys being put together upstairs. (I also remembered that I actually purchased a large Victoria key for my mom a few years ago, so I wonder where that is...) But after my local store got renovated, all the keys are now put together in one display.
Some of the keys are more obviously fine than others (like, the kaleidoscope key just presents as “fine” to me, if I had to take a guess). But if you asked me which side the fleur des lis key belongs to, I really couldn’t tell you. Some of the fleur keys look much more ornate than others. And fleur des lis now has its own collection that’s a separate entity from the keys. I could see it being fashion or fine.
Eh, anyways, my SA tells me that Tiffany is moving away from the fine/fashion distinction with the new store concept. Now, it’s all about integration, because customers apparently don’t separate Tiffany fine and fashion jewelry from each other when making their purchases. Not sure what this means regarding the accent stones, however. Will Tiffany standardize all accent stones to be D—G? Or will there still be G—J diamonds being used for ”lower-end” pieces?
I have a hard time believing that the opposite event would take place, like Tiffany lowering the color grade for Schlumberger pieces — especially given that LVMH is trying to make Schlumberger the flagship designer line.
Oh, also, apparently, Tiffany used to not use I color stones at all. There was a lot of backlash from veteran SAs when Tiffany began implementing I as a color option for engagement rings. The sales associates were like, “What is the company thinking?” But that’s what the market wanted at the time, and it turned out to not be met with as much public criticism as the SAs feared. A lesson in customer indifference, I suppose. *Shrug*
