News

  • Vinnie Day partners with the Lovo Event at Ice Tank, Holborn on the hottest night

    Vinnie was asked by the Lovo Girls to partner with them at their Lovo Launch last night at Ice Tank in Covent Garden.  Despite being one of the hottest nights in London ever recorded, there was a plethora of people who sipped eagerly and satisfied at their refreshing Coconut Vodka drinks while they looked at the new coconut inspired Vinnie Day collection cocooned in bell jars, hanging from an owl's twig.

    New Coconut Collection

    We had our loyal customers and friends along.  Also among the crowds was Towie's, Billie and Sam Faiers.  The pair certainly looked like they were celebrating as they enjoyed a fun night out together.  Billie, 25, was dressed to impress in a slinky white lace dress.

    This wonderful model wore our new coconut leaf earrings. 

    These pieces will be uploaded to our website shortly, in the mean time, please sign up to our newsletter on our website as this will inform you when we are up and selling the coconut collection on line.

    Who is Lovo? 

    It was started by Jessica and Harriet, pictured here:

    LOVO – where delicious ingredients love vodka. For those searching for a great tasting alternative to wine and sugary cocktails. Coconut LOVO is a perfect blend of pure Thai coconut water and premium vodka, with less than 1% natural sugar. Each 250ml bottle contains 128 calories, with absolutely no refined sugar, artificial colours or flavours.

    At LOVO, we care about what we put in our bodies, but could never find a drink that lived up to our expectations. Don’t get us wrong, there’s a special place in our hearts for a good mojito, or a glass of crisp white wine, but when we wanted a lighter, fresher alternative to ‘liquid cake’, we always drew a blank. The solution? A new great tasting, low sugar, ready to drink beverage, with no artificial colours and flavours – a delicious cocktail but with zero guilt. And because we care about what we put in our bodies, we’ve shunned the ingredients with names we can barely pronounce, including only a short list of select raw ingredients, mostly from natural sources.

    For further information, visit their website: www.lovodrink.com
  • Ways To Wear: Architec-tural Earrings

    It seems only right that the spotlight is put back on the earring right now. The Eighties is about to resurge as the decade of choice, usurping the summer's love-in with the Seventies, and let's face it, if there was ever a decade to champion a big earring it was the Eighties.

    But this is only part of the story. We suddenly got a rush for the jewellery item once more when we saw hoops on the Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2015 catwalk.  And ever since, from spring/summer 2015 to pre-spring/summer 2016 collections, the likes of Christian Dior, Loewe, Balenciaga and Givenchy have been putting forward the case for an exquisitely sculpted piece of pierce to keep us thinking and shift our gaze to the lure of the lobe. It's all about an architectural earring (last season's ear cuffs should be firmly placed at the back of the drawer or given new lease of life worn as a brooch instead).

    What marks out one of these earrings from any other? It should weave and wind as opposed to just dangle and shine; it should literally go in one ear and out the other such is its engineered design; it shouldn't work as an exact pair, asymmetry is chic here.

    But architecture is in the air right now - the pre-spring/summer 2016 shows from Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton showing off more than just seasonal collections and adding as well an exotic location to their fashion credentials. And if you can't afford Bob Hope's Palm Springs estate, then surely an earring to riff on its carefully constructed nature should do the trick?

    Written by Jessica Bumpus for Vogue.com on 19th May 2015

  • Cartier jewels chosen for BBC's Burton and Taylor

    Cartier jewellery is set appear in the upcoming BBC drama Burton and Taylor which will air on July 22.

    The programme is focused on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton being reunited to act together in the 1983 play Private Lives. Cartier was approached by Burton and Taylor's producers who wished to use jewellery that reflected as closely as possible the tastes of Elizabeth Taylor.

    The drama features Helena Bonham-Carter playing Elizabeth Taylor and Dominic West in the role of Richard Burton. Bonham-Carter wears Cartier's pink gold Love bracelet with four diamonds, supplied by Cartier for the duration of the filming

    Elizabeth Taylor wore a number of iconic Cartier pieces during her life, including its Juste Un Clou bracelet and the Love bracelet.

    Burton and Taylor will air Monday July 22 at 9pm on BBC Four.

     

    http://www.professionaljeweller.com/article-13327-cartier-jewels-chosen-for-bbcs-burton-and-taylor/

  • Where do diamonds come from?

     

    nature of diamonds

    Some must-know facts about diamonds.

    Absolute perfection.

    Flawless nature and pure beauty. We’ve tried to find one word for all these adjectives. And we came up with DIAMONDS. These pearls are metastable allotropes of carbon with strong covalent bonding between its atoms. In order for a diamond to form in natural condition, it requires high pressure carbon-bearing materials exposure between 900 – 1 300 °C [conditions that can be found only in two places on earth: in lithosphere and at the site of a meteorite strike. As a matter a fact, diamond crystals are brought closer to earth’s surface through volcanic activity.]. Roughly speaking.

    But, where do they come from?

    It’s been said that diamonds have been mined [for the first time] somewhere in India along the Penner, Krishna or Godavari rivers. And more than 3 000 years have passed since then, but their true popularity has risen in the 19th century because of their usage in engraving tools that have led to economical growth in the entire world. Moreover, alongside the Orange River from South Africa, immense diamond mines were discovered in 1867 and then boom. [Practically, the earliest written proof of diamonds’ existence dates back to ca. 500 B.C.] All the financiers and business people saw a glimpse. The investments that came afterwards were huge, yet endangered and the diamonds’ price depended entirely on their scarcity.

    “The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond,
    and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.”

    DANIEL DEFOE
    English trader, writer, journalist, most famous for his Robinson Crusoe novel [ca. 1660 – 24 April 1731]

    The American investigative journalist [and Harvard professor] Edward Jay Epstein said in his 1982 Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? article that “the diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance”. The word “diamond” comes from “proper”, “unalterable”, “unbreakable” ancient Greek descriptions. In order to gain “the hardest material on Earth” title [actually, it’s only a myth that diamonds are 58 times stronger than anything else that exists in nature, Aggregated Diamond Nanorods (ADNRs or “hyperdiamond”), heated carbon fullerene molecules, is 11% harder than a diamond], diamonds have to check the purity, crystalline perfection and orientation attributes first. Their hardness is higher as they get near flawlessness.

     “Diamonds are intrinsically worthless,
    except for the deep psychological need they fill.”

    Nicky Oppenheimer
    [Chairman at De Beers, one of the biggest companies of Mining and trading of diamonds, founded in 1888]

    In their pure state, diamonds have no colour, but the rarest ones are blue or red as opposed to the most common yellow and brown coloured. When it comes to countries and their diamonds, Russia produces the biggest volume in the world while Botswana is first in value of diamonds. North America can produce 12% of the total diamond production [on earth] because of the Ekati Mine and others from Canada. There is no surprise that America is the largest diamond market even though the U.S. produces almost no diamonds.

    Many companies now mine diamonds across the world with over 50% coming from Africa. Only 20% of rough diamonds are good enough to be polished and used for items such as rings, earings and necklaces.

    There are four stages the diamond must go through before it reaches the market place.

    1. Mining.
    2. Rough Diamonds Reach the Market Place.
    3. Manufacturing the Diamond.
    4. Selling the Diamond.

    http://www.jewellerymonthly.com/where-do-diamonds-come-from/#