Versatile, affordable jewellery for multi-faceted women

Birthed out of deep love and passion for jewellery, The Jewel Factor provides patrons with an unparalleled choice of pieces and styles. Helming from a family business background of diamonds and fine jewellery, Priti Mandhana launched ‘The Jewel Factor’ with a desire to experiment with style whilst making it more accessible and affordable.

As an Indian girl who grew up in Hong Kong, lived a few yearsin London and is now residing in India; Priti drew inspiration from the cultures she imbibed, thework experiences she garnered, the people she met and the places she travelled to. Garneringvast knowledge of the industry as well as a deep-rooted understanding of aesthetics, fashionand creativity, it was her relentless love of fashion jewellery that took the forefront inher career.

A striking hybrid between Indian and Western design influences, the brand is a reflection ofdiversity, therefore stands out due to its versatility. Priti shares, “From a very young age, I was fascinated by design and appreciated creativity in all forms such as art, architecture, fashion and ofcourse jewellery. Having grown up around jewellery and seeing how something so small, can yet be so beautiful and precious, instantly caught my eye, a form of art, on your body. I loved how I could play with so many materials, techniques, colours and cater my pieces to a much larger segment of women.”

The idea behind the brand is to provide the customer with a wide range of jewellery for all occasions and styles. Since inception, the brand has done private shows and exhibitions around India and abroad. One of the key USP’s of the brand is giving comfort a huge importance. Their jewellery often looks heavy due to the craftsmanship or material, is adored by customers because of its light weight.

“The idea of making women from all walks of life and not just a certain segment of society, feel more beautiful, empowered and confident is a huge driving factor. I want to make The Jewel Factor accessible and known to woman from all parts of the world, just bringing gorgeous jewellery. Whenever I would imagine my jewellery brand, I always imagined it with more of an offline presence than an online business model. Of course, being present online for any brand today is very important but I didn’t think that I would run a full-fledged ecommerce brand,” adds Priti.

Priti also believes that the beauty of the internet and social media is that you are able to reach places over a click of a button and geography doesn’t set boundaries. However, that also demands the brand to be constantly communicating and dealing with customers who overall have a very short attention span.

Meanwhile sharing about her competitors, Priti said that a lot of the brands whom they consider as competitors, have been in the market for a much longer time.

She adds, “Our strength is our design and versatility. We provide our customers with a wide range of jewellery and personally feel the quality of our collection is stronger than our competitors already. We also have a pretty strong international presence and a sizeable percentage of our business is from out of India. That definitely is a proud achievement as it takes much more of leap of faith to pay for international shipping and trust to order from an ecommerce brand and we have managed to achieve that in a short span of time.”

The brand has already gained a good customer base in the international market and would like tofurther expand on that in the upcoming years, positioning itself in the international domain.

Not Forever: World’s Biggest Pink Diamond Mine Stops Production

The world’s largest pink diamond mine has shut its doors after exhausting its reserves of the expensive gems, global mining giant Rio Tinto said Tuesday.

The Argyle mine, in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, churned out more than 90 percent of the world’s pink diamonds — sought after for their incredible rarity.

The seam was discovered in 1979 and the Anglo-Australian firm began mining operations there four years later.

It has since produced more than 865 million carats of rough diamonds, including a small but steady stream of prized pink stones, according to Rio Tinto.

Argyle employees and indigenous landowners attended a ceremony at the shuttered mine to mark the end of operations.

The company expects efforts to decommission and dismantle the 37-year-old site will take around five years.

“A new chapter will now begin as we start the process of respectfully closing the Argyle mine and rehabilitating the land, to be handed back to its traditional custodians,” mine manager Andrew Wilson said.

Over the past two decades, the value of pink diamonds has risen by 500 percent, Rio Tinto’s Sinead Kaufman told public broadcaster ABC.

The end of operations at Argyle is likely to push the price of the diamonds even higher, jewellers say. At current rates, the gems can fetch up to $3 million per carat.

Diamonds are typically clear, but jewels such as those mined at Argyle become pink through extreme heat and pressure during their creation. Those conditions warp their crystal lattices and alter the reflection of light as it passes through the body of the diamond.

Gemstone Medallion Necklaces Just Right for the 2020 Holiday

Medallion necklaces are jewelry’s MVP this season. Typically designed as circular gold disks, these pendant styles go all the way back to the Greco-Roman era, when they were worn as visible symbols of wealth. Today, the medallion has taken on new resonance as a way to convey meaning via engravings on one or both of its sides, be they initials, birth dates, horoscopes, or symbols. But the traditional gold circular pendant on a long yellow gold chain has become so popular that it’s beginning to feel a little cliché. That’s one reason why we love colored stone medallions—these are circular or semicircular designs that boast a cluster of similarly hued gemstones, or an artful arrangement of stones in complementary hues, in place of engravings. Below, we feature five fresh takes on the medallion that can be worn alone or layered with other necklaces for maximum impact. Novella Statement Pendant By David Yurman In the Novella collection, David Yurman riffs on one of the brand’s most recognizable collections, Renaissance—the first collection David and Sybil designed together. Using a similarly rich color palette inspired by classical paintings, the line pairs architectural silhouettes with a bold array of gemstones, available in both cool and warm hues.

Kaleidoscope Necklace By Harry Winston The kaleidoscope is the ultimate toy for anyone besotted with color, so it stands to reason that in the 1990s, when the house of Harry Winston wanted to create an objet d’art for gem lovers, it created the Ultimate Kaleidoscope, a limited-edition jewel for the home. This year, the brand pays homage to that bejeweled creation with a new line featuring medallion necklaces set with gems in symmetrical pat terns, swinging from 30-inch gem-set chains.

Ten Ten Shaker Necklace By Moritz Glik

A piece by Moritz Glik is instantly recognizable. That’s because the New York City–based jeweler’s signature design, the Kaleidoscope Shaker, is like nothing else out there. Enclosed within white sapphire glass, a smattering of faceted gems shift like sand in an hourglass. In this Ten Ten Shaker necklace, the circular frame lends the piece a lovely medallion-like quality.

Revival Row Necklace By ParkFord This year’s quarantine wasn’t all bad for Jeanette Park, the designer behind Chicago-based ParkFord: Her new Revival collection is proof of that. Rife with semicircular motifs that recall her hometown’s spectacular architecture, the collection has a number of long necklaces that interpret the medallion style in surprisingly contemporary ways.

Horizon Pendant By Temple St. Clair Temple St. Clair’s Horizon pendant is small and made of gold, but its beguiling assortment of rainbow gems—like an eight-gem take on the traditional nine-gem navaratna—sets it apart from the plain-gold styles dominating showcases this season.