Gems and Jewels are not luxury goods

As strange as it could sound, gemstones and jewels do not belong to the current luxury space.

 

“Valuables” are for sure consumer discretionary goods, hence they do not certainly fulfill the primary needs along the Maslow pyramid nor they match the secondary ones according to the general economic theory. Nonetheless, 2,5 years ago the humankind decided to adorn the body prior to cover it with clothes. This is to remind us that the intrinsic functions of gems and jewelry have consistently led to stir up emotions, state individual personalities and communicate through appearance.

 

In other words, no question asked as to the ability of gems and jewels to promote a vanity fair, yet the initial dream to observe, show or wear them stems from the charm of the relationship between a single person and a specific item which becomes “precious” for many and different reasons.

 

The key point is indeed the meaning of “preciousness”. Etymology is clear: pretiousus, in Latin, derives from pretium, price or prestige, hence expensive but also prestigious, something whose remarkable intrinsic qualities justify a high price. Therefore, what takes to preciousness is the causal link between a given gem or piece of jewelry and the material or intimate relevance attributed or perceived by an individual. Material relevance may come because it is useful, or the result of superior techniques or of many hours of handwork; intimate relevance refers to the sense of complacency, gratification or satisfaction that arises. As a consequence, the expensiveness cannot be measured in absolute terms but only on a relative basis: a spectacular hessonite garnet can give me much more emotions than a diamond which I am totally indifferent to, thus a real bargain on the diamond could still turn more expensive than a Bond street price for the garnet.

 

You may wonder why we have not mentioned so far the scarcity value as a determinant of the material relevance. Good point ! Yet scarcity has not truly affected the economy of jewels and gems for long time. Gold and diamond reserves are remarkably in excess of their respective demand on the market; there is no shortage of sapphire and I am pretty confident that emeralds have been mined more than tsavorites and demantoids at any point in time. Ironically, the rarest gemstones, technically speaking, are classified among the so called semi-precious stones: some of them are pretty much unknown even to the vast majority of insiders (e.g. the musgravite or the painite), while others, exactly because of their rarity, are known and appreciated by a limited number of dealers and collectors, but never really advertised to retail consumers (e.g. Ural alexandrite and the red beryl).

 

Now, if we try to match the historical functions of gems and jewels with the meaning of preciousness, we must link each “valuable” to its intrinsic value, i.e. its either material or intimate relevance.

 

If luxury meant the celebration of the highest intrinsic values of any good, then we could admittedly consider including gems and jewels in this space. On the contrary, today luxury generally refers to a show-off of economic wealth per se, where the price is implicitly (within the brand) or explicitly the primary differentiating factor, as opposed to quality and intrinsic values which are left well behind.

So, if “valuables” are not luxury goods, which sector do they belong to? Let’s be provocative but also adamant: none! They are suitable to fall into the space of any Person as such and this broad sphere of action cannot be classified in a single commercial dimension. Not just because beauty and intrinsic value are accessible at limited costs too but more importantly because gems and jewels are eligible to satisfy the widest spectrum of personal interests and sources of complacency: History, Geography, Myth and Legends, Art, Physics, Math, Chemistry, Drawing, Fashion and Costumes, Semiotics of colors, Symbolism, Crystal Healing Power – just to mention some of them – in addition, of course, to Geology, Mineralogy, Gemology and Goldsmith techniques.