How To Wear A Diamond

A LANDMARK COLLECTION arrives with a new set of rules.

- Stellene Volandes

The world of Tiffany, it would be safe to say, begins in ice, not fire. And, yes, that should be taken metaphorically: Charles Lewis Tiffany was named King of Diamonds in 1887, after he had shrewdly set up shop in Paris and bought about a third of the newly available French crown jewels for his clients in the rising class of American aristocrats. In 1878, Tiffany acquired the world’s largest and finest yellow diamond, and in 1886 the company introduced the diamond engagement ring.

But let’s also consider actual ice, blocks of it. Like the one that visionary Tiffany window designer Gene Moore put in the middle of a display on Fifth Avenue in 1957 next to a Tiffany ring. Or the block sitting in the middle of a raw space off Tenth Avenue in Manhattan this fall, infused with wildflowers near a gem-encrusted flower on a gold industrial wire choker. That was just a room away from a video installation of the patterns water makes as it freezes, the backdrop for a vitrine holding a one-of-a-kind necklace that has 237 uniquely cut diamonds connected by craftsmen in a kind of high jewelry puzzle to create the illusion of ice—or, to “mimic an iceberg a drift on a sea of platinum.” We have now entered the universe of the Tiffany Blue Book 2018. It’s a good place to be.